An alternative classification of solar particle events that reach the earth ground level

Abstract

There is currently a controversy in the literature about the denomination of Energetic Solar Protons, which are usually designated as Ground Level Enhancements (GLE), Sub-GLE or simply Solar Energetic Particles (SEP). Such classifications depend on the nature of a given event behavior. There is some criteria discrepancy among different authors that we have pointed out in the first part of this work. In order to unify criteria, here we carry out an analysis of several data bases and different catalogs of particle events. We observe that there is some discrepancy in the conceptualization of events in the specialized literature, and we hereby propose a reconceptualization in the sense that all GLE fulfill the criteria given in the literature to be considered as GLE, even those that have been classified recently as Sub-GLE/GLE for the particular case of the present cycle 24 To discern the kind of solar particle enhancements occurring during the present Solar Cycle, we base our work on different database of NM, data from the SOHO satellite catalogue and SEP catalogs. This leads us to recommend a reconceptualization of the kind of involved events. Our proposal is to name the event according to its date of occurrence, which leads us to avoid renumbering in case of detecting an intermediate event between two others already officially numbered, in the specific case of GLE. We propose, for instance, the following nomenclature: GLE dd/mm/yyyy. Another option is to consider all events that reach the terrestrial level simply as GLE with the first nomenclature just given above, which obviously includes GLE and Sub-GLE.