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CME Velocity and Acceleration Error Estimates Using the Bootstrap MethodThe bootstrap method is used to determine errors of basic attributes of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) visually identified in images obtained by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission's Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instruments. The basic parameters of CMEs are stored, among others, in a database known as the SOHO/LASCO CME catalog and are widely employed for many research studies. The basic attributes of CMEs (e.g. velocity and acceleration) are obtained from manually generated height-time plots. The subjective nature of manual measurements introduces random errors that are difficult to quantify. In many studies the impact of such measurement errors is overlooked. In this study we present a new possibility to estimate measurements errors in the basic attributes of CMEs. This approach is a computer-intensive method because it requires repeating the original data analysis procedure several times using replicate datasets. This is also commonly called the bootstrap method in the literature. We show that the bootstrap approach can be used to estimate the errors of the basic attributes of CMEs having moderately large numbers of height-time measurements. The velocity errors are in the vast majority small and depend mostly on the number of height-time points measured for a particular event. In the case of acceleration, the errors are significant, and for more than half of all CMEs, they are larger than the acceleration itself.
Document ID
20180000634
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Michalek, Grzegorz
(Jagiellonian Univ. Cracow, Poland)
Gopalswamy, Nat
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Yashiro, Seiji
(Catholic Univ. of America Washington, DC, United States)
Date Acquired
January 18, 2018
Publication Date
August 14, 2017
Publication Information
Publication: Solar Physics
Publisher: Springer
Volume: 292
ISSN: 0038-0938
e-ISSN: 1573-093X
Subject Category
Solar Physics
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN51083
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNG11PL10A
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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