Complexity in Sequences of Solar Flares and Earthquakes

Abstract

In this paper the statistical properties of solar flares and earthquakes are compared by analyzing the energy distributions, the time series of energies and interevent times, and, above all, the distributions of interevent times per se. It is shown that the two phenomena have different statistics of scaling, and even the same phenomenon, when observed in different periods or at different locations, is characterized by different statistics that cannot be uniformly rescaled onto a single, universal curve. The results indicate apparent complexity of impulsive energy release processes, which neither follow a common behaviour nor could be attributed to a universal physical mechanism.