We present a transformer model, named DeepHalo, to predict the occurrence of halo coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Our model takes as input an active region (AR) and a profile, where the profile contains a time series of data samples in the AR that are collected 24 hours before the beginning of a day, and predicts whether the AR would produce a halo CME during that day. Each data sample contains physical parameters, or features, derived from photospheric vector magnetic field data taken by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). We survey and match CME events in the Space Weather Database Of Notification, Knowledge, Information (DONKI) and Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) CME Catalog, and compile a list of CMEs including halo CMEs and non-halo CMEs associated with ARs in the period between November 2010 and August 2023. We use the information gathered above to build the labels (positive versus negative) of the data samples and profiles at hand, where the labels are needed for machine learning. Experimental results show that DeepHalo with a true skill statistics (TSS) score of 0.907 outperforms a closely related long short-term memory network with a TSS score of 0.821. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the transformer model has been used for halo CME prediction.

The application of machine learning to the study of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and their impacts on Earth has seen significant growth recently. Understanding and forecasting CME geoeffectiveness is crucial for protecting infrastructure in space and ensuring the resilience of technological systems on Earth. Here we present GeoCME, a deep-learning framework designed to predict, deterministically or probabilistically, whether a CME event that arrives at Earth will cause a geomagnetic storm. A geomagnetic storm is defined as a disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere during which the minimum Dst index value is less than -50 nT. GeoCME is trained on observations from the instruments including LASCO C2, EIT and MDI on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), focusing on a dataset that includes 136 halo/partial halo CMEs in Solar Cycle 23. Using ensemble and transfer learning techniques, GeoCME is capable of extracting features hidden in the SOHO observations and making predictions based on the learned features. Our experimental results demonstrate the good performance of GeoCME, achieving a Matthew's correlation coefficient of 0.807 and a true skill statistics score of 0.714 when the tool is used as a deterministic prediction model. When the tool is used as a probabilistic forecasting model, it achieves a Brier score of 0.094 and a Brier skill score of 0.493. These results are promising, showing that the proposed GeoCME can help enhance our understanding of CME-triggered solar-terrestrial interactions.

Solar flares, especially the M- and X-class flares, are often associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs). They are the most important sources of space weather effects, that can severely impact the near-Earth environment. Thus it is essential to forecast flares (especially the M-and X-class ones) to mitigate their destructive and hazardous consequences. Here, we introduce several statistical and Machine Learning approaches to the prediction of the AR's Flare Index (FI) that quantifies the flare productivity of an AR by taking into account the numbers of different class flares within a certain time interval. Specifically, our sample includes 563 ARs appeared on solar disk from May 2010 to Dec 2017. The 25 magnetic parameters, provided by the Space-weather HMI Active Region Patches (SHARP) from Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), characterize coronal magnetic energy stored in ARs by proxy and are used as the predictors. We investigate the relationship between these SHARP parameters and the FI of ARs with a machine-learning algorithm (spline regression) and the resampling method (Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique for Regression with Gaussian Noise, short by SMOGN). Based on the established relationship, we are able to predict the value of FIs for a given AR within the next 1-day period. Compared with other 4 popular machine learning algorithms, our methods improve the accuracy of FI prediction, especially for large FI. In addition, we sort the importance of SHARP parameters by Borda Count method calculated from the ranks that are rendered by 9 different machine learning methods.

Solar activity is usually caused by the evolution of solar magnetic fields. Magnetic field parameters derived from photospheric vector magnetograms of solar active regions have been used to analyze and forecast eruptive events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Unfortunately, the most recent solar cycle 24 was relatively weak with few large flares, though it is the only solar cycle in which consistent time-sequence vector magnetograms have been available through the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) since its launch in 2010. In this paper, we look into another major instrument, namely the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) from 1996 to 2010. The data archive of SOHO/MDI covers more active solar cycle 23 with many large flares. However, SOHO/MDI data only has line-of-sight (LOS) magnetograms. We propose a new deep learning method, named MagNet, to learn from combined LOS magnetograms, Bx and By taken by SDO/HMI along with H-alpha observations collected by the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO), and to generate vector components Bx' and By', which would form vector magnetograms with observed LOS data. In this way, we can expand the availability of vector magnetograms to the period from 1996 to present. Experimental results demonstrate the good performance of the proposed method. To our knowledge, this is the first time that deep learning has been used to generate photospheric vector magnetograms of solar active regions for SOHO/MDI using SDO/HMI and H-alpha data.