Relative fluxes of shock and prompt peaks in SEP event time profiles Original Research Article

Peak fluxes are an important property of gradual solar energetic particle (SEP) event time profiles from both astro/heliophysical and applications perspectives. However, the peak flux in an event may occur at the event onset, or at the time of the interplanetary shock arrival (the ESP or energetic storm particles). This makes an important difference in the interpretation of the peak flux, and in any attempts to characterize or model it. This paper describes a study of SEP data sets from ACE, IMP-8 and GOES toward determining the relative properties of these peak fluxes for protons with energies near 1, 10, and 50 MeV. The results suggest that for gradual events with both peaks, the ESP peak often dominates at 1 MeV energies and is dominant about half the time at 10 MeV. Moreover, the prompt peak fluxes can be used to estimate the shock peak (ESP event) up to days ahead, especially in the lower energy range.