Following solar activity with CaLMa

Abstract

The Castilla-La Mancha (CaLMa) neutron monitor is continuously operating since 26 October 2011. It is located at Guadalajara (40°38"N, 3°9"W) at 708 m above sea level and 55 km away from Madrid. It iscovering a gap in the Neutron Monitor Data Base (NMDB), thanks to its geographical location, its height above sea level and its vertical cutoff rigidity (6.95 GV). CaLMa is providing counts of galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) with a temporal resolution of 1 min, being the mean count rate 5 c/s/counter. This high cadence allows the monitoring of solar activity by mean the observed variation in count rate. Both in the sort term and in the long term activity, i.e., flare or coronal mass ejections and solar modulation, can therefore be studied with CaLMa"s measurements. During this last year, CaLMa has measured variations in the GCR count rate related to interplanetary coronal mass ejections, fast solar wind streams, shocks and stream interaction regions. In this work we analyze the solar wind condition associated to variations in CaLMa"s count rate and we compare them with other neutron monitors.