The proportion of hot and cold regions in the polar solar corona during 1957–2002

Abstract

Occultation observations of the intensity of the FeXIV 530.3 nm and FeX 637.4 nm forbidden lines detected at the Kislovodsk Mountain Station during 1957–2002, indicate long-term changes in the structure of the solar corona. The monthly average intensities of green (KI530.3) and red (KI637.4) spectral lines are calculated for all latitudes (0°–90°) and for a high-latitude zone (45°–90°). A strong correlation (r = 0.91) between the green KI530.3 line intensity and the Wolf numbers is found and used to fill gaps in the observations. The ratio KI637.4/KI530.3 takes on its maximum value at the solar minimum. The KI637.4p/KI530.3p ratio in the high-latitude solar zone (45°–90°) increased by more than a factor of two during 1957–2002. This means that the fraction of cool regions in the polar corona has more than doubled over these years. We suggest that this increase in the number of cool regions is related to an increase in the area of the polar solar zones occupied by magnetic field of a single polarity at the solar minimum, and possibly to an increase in the area occupied by polar coronal holes. This is associated with long-term variations in the internal structure of the Sun.