THE INTENSITY OF THE GEOMAGNETIC STORMS ASSOCIATED WITH IMF AND SOLAR WIND PARAMETERS DURING SOLAR CYCLE 24

Proper knowledge about the nature of geomagnetic storms and their relationships with the conditions of the space environment at the outer part of the Earth’s magnetosphere (bow shock nose) is essential to increase our resilience to space weather disturbances. In this paper, we present the empirical analysis of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) and solar wind parameters relevant to 100 geomagnetic storms in the solar cycle 24. We revisit the relationship between the minimum disturbance index (Dstmin), the minimum southward IMF (Bz(-)min), the maximum solar wind density (Nmax) and speed (Vmax), and also the lag time between the extrema (dT(Bz,N), dT(Bz,V)). We end up with a regression formula that fits the data with the coefficient of determination R2 = 0.58, root-mean-square error RMS E = 21.30 nT, and mean absolute error MAE = 15.87 nT. Even though this empirical model is outperformed by more complex machine learning models, it serves the oretically sensible alternative for understanding and forecasting geomagnetic storms.