Is there more global solar activity on the Sun?

Abstract

AbstractThere appear indications of more global activity on the Sun which is larger, much beyond the scale of solar active regions (ARs). These indications include formation, flaring and eruption of the trans-equatorial loops seen in EUV and X-rays, formation and eruption of trans-equatorial filaments, global magnetic connectivity in EUV dimming associated with halo-coronal mass ejections, wide spread of radio burst sources in meter wavelength in the solar corona, and quasi-simultaneous magnetic flux emergence in both hemispheres seen during some major solar events. With examples of a few major events in the last solar cycle we discuss the possibility that there is large or global-scale activity on the Sun. Its spatial scale is many times larger than that of AR and temporal scale is over 10 hours. The exemplified trans-equatorial loops are anchored in ARs and their activity is temporally associated with flares in ARs too. In some sense the flares in ARs appear either as a part of or a precursor of the more global activity. It is likely that the combination of the flares in ARs and the associated global activity is responsible to the major solar-terrestrial events. More efforts in understanding the global activity are undertaken.