The "preconditioning" of the magnetosphere by one impact leads to greater severity of the next impact. Of the 8 (EIGHT) CMEs launched, the first 3 apparently bundled together and struck at once. At least 5 more to go.
"CME-CME Interactions: Preconditioning, Collisions and Flux Erosion: How to Create a Perfect Storm?"
ui.adsabs.harvard.edu
"As we see increasing solar activity within solar cycle 25, we thus seek to understand how CMEs can interact with one another to produce an exceptionally geo-effective event, i.e. "a perfect storm" at the Earth. In this paper we implement a spheromak CME description within a 3-D heliospheric MHD model and parametrically examine their interactions and assess their resultant geo-effectiveness through the use of solar wind-magnetosphere coupling functions. The myriad of potential space weather impacts at the Earth are reflected in the complexities of CME-CME interactions, with different solar wind variables peaking for differing scenarios of solar wind preconditioning, shock-CME collisions and prolonged interactions of their internal magnetic fields. In particular, we reveal how the orientation and handedness of successive CMEs can have a major impact on the large-scale conservation and loss of magnetic flux within these magnetic clouds, and consequently Bz, due to magnetic reconnection with the interplanetary magnetic field." |
