Linking Critical Heights in Solar Active Regions with 3D Coronal Mass Ejection Speeds: Insights from Automated and Manual Polarity Inversion Line Detection Methods

In a space weather context, the most geoeffective coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are fast CMEs from Earth-facing solar active regions. These CMEs are difficult to characterize in coronagraph data due to their high speed (fewer observations), faintness, Earthward orientation (halo CMEs), and disruptions from associated high-energy particle storms. Any diagnostic aiding in early CME speed identification is valuable. This study investigates whether the 3D speeds of 37 CMEs are correlated with the critical heights of their source regions, to test the hypothesis that if the critical height is located at a higher altitude in the corona, the weaker magnetic field environment will enable a faster CME to be produced. Critical heights near CME onset are calculated by identifying polarity inversion lines (PIL) in magnetogram data using automated and manual methods. 3D speeds are determined by fitting a Graduated Cylindrical Shell model to multiviewpoint coronagraph images. For the automated method, we find a high correlation of 71% ± 8% between CME speed and critical height, dropping to 48% ± 12% when using CME plane-of-sky speeds, on which most previous similar studies are based. An attempt to improve the critical height diagnostic through manual PIL selection yields a lower correlation of 58% ± 13%. The higher correlation from the automated method suggests that encompassing the full PIL structure is a better measure of the magnetic conditions that influence CME dynamics. Our results highlight the potential for critical height as a continuously computable diagnostic for forecasting the 3D speeds of Earth-directed CMEs.