The Observed Spectral Evolution of Solar Flare Hard X-Ray Emission

The spectral evolution of flare emission may be characterized using color-color diagrams (CCDs), a technique which has been widely employed by the astrophysics community, but not yet by the solar flare community. CCDs are constructed for a sample of flares observed simultaneously by CGRO/BATSE and Yohkoh/HXT. It is found that flare spectral evolution follows one of only a few patterns, which generally evolve differently than the soft-hard-soft pattern put forth as the norm in previous work. The implications for the nature of flare energy release and acceleration/propagation models are discussed