1. Discussion Summary: Group B –Solar Active Regions And Their Production of Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections Discussion Leaders: George Fisher Hugh Hudson

2. Our Discussion led to 2 classes of potential solar hazard prediction tools: Existing techniques that have obvious usefulness, but need further development and testing Strategic tools that will offer much better solar-weather forecasting, but need a sustained effort over a long time before the results will be achieved

3. Promising solar forecast tools that exist now Empirical Magnetogram based predictors for CMEs and Flares in active regions

4. Helioseismic forecasts of active regions before they rotate around the limb …

5. ... before they emerge, and before the occurrence of large flares

6. Other existing techniques that appear very promising and/or easily implemented and tested: Force-free magnetogram measures of free magnetic energy Measuring the flux of magnetic free energy through the photosphere Coronal morphology changes ~6-24 hours prior to eruption, e.g. coronal density enhancements

7. Strategic research that will lead to better prediction of CMEs I “Force-free” (chromosphere or higher) vector magnetograms Techniques for assimilating datasets relevant to the global coronal magnetic field, radio and X-ray/EUV imaging spectroscopy, and coronal seismology. Detailed observational determination of the magnetic topology in filament channels to determine the CME eruption mechanism

8. Strategic research that will lead to better prediction of CMEs II Observational investigations of the sequence of events in filament, CME, and flare dynamics at flare onset and early development. Self-consistent MHD models of coupled photospheric, chromospheric, and coronal parts of the solar atmosphere to pursue a vigorous investigation of CME initiation physics and how to drive such models with real observational data. Determine how flares (e.g., magnetic reconnection) can accelerate particles able to fill a large open-field domain

9. Resources: a Sentinels Component… A Sentinels program is essential for improved forecasting of dangerous solar activity on time scales of days to weeks The most important Sentinels observation would be line-of-sight magnetography

10. Other needed resources… Measurements of coronal magnetic field strength on the solar disk. spectroscopic coronagraph to measure shocks in low corona space-based force-free full-disk vector magnetograph