Abstract The study of strong solar energetic particles (SEPs) allows one to understand their acceleration and propagation in interplanetary space and gives the necessary basis to quantify the related cosmic-ray-induced terrestrial and space weather effects. During solar eruptive processes, such as solar flares and/or coronal mass ejections solar ions are accelerated to a high energy range. In most cases, the energy of the accelerated solar ions reaches several tens of MeV/nucleon, yet occasionally it exceeds 100 MeV/n or even reaches the GeV/n range. In the latter case, the energy of SEPs is enough, so that they induce a complicated particle shower in the earth’s atmosphere, whose secondary particles reach the ground, eventually registered by ground-based detectors, such as neutron monitors (NMs). This particular class of events is known as ground-level enhancements (GLEs). Here we present a method for the analysis of GLEs, using neutron monitor data. Verification of the method with direct space-borne measurements is performed and good agreement is achieved. The derived SEP spectra give the necessary basis to model and quantify cosmic-ray-induced terrestrial and space weather effects following major solar eruptions. We present an example study, that is a full chain analysis of notable GLEs, namely their SEP energy/rigidity spectra derived using records from the global NM network and a model for computation of the induced space weather effects i.e. effective doses during those events.
Mishev et al. (Sun,) studied this question.