Problems in Identification of ICMEs and Magnetic Clouds

This work is a part of our project to establish a Website which provides a list of magnetic clouds (MCs) identified by WIND and ACE spacecraft. MCs are characterized by their magnetic fields that are well described by magnetic flux rope structures, whereas interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) are interplanetary manifestations of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), usually identified by differences of plasma and magnetic field characteristics from those in the background solar wind. It is widely accepted that, while MCs are generally identified within ICMEs, the number of MCs are significantly lower than the number of ICMEs. In our effort to identify MCs, however, we have found that there was a big problem in identification method of MCs in previous works. Generally speaking, most of the previous surveys failed in identifying MCs which encounter the spacecraft at large distances from the MC axis, or near the surface of MC structures. In our survey, MCs are identified as the region of which magnetic fields are well described by appropriate flux rope models. Thus, we could selected over 45 MCs, in 1999 solar wind data for instance, while 33 ICMEs are listed in the Website of the ACE Science Center reported by Richardson and Cane.