Variations of CMEs Properties during the Different Phases of the Solar Cycle 23

As coronal mass ejections introduce large‐scale changes in the corona, which have fundamental implication for the evolution of the magnetic flux of the Sun, the long‐term behavior of CMEs is of great interest to be investigated. In this work the main properties of 13985 coronal mass ejections (CMEs) observed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) from January 1996 until December 2008 covering the last solar cycle 23 are studied. Specifically, the detected CMEs taking into account the gaps of SOHO during this solar cycle, seem to present fluctuations from the expected behavior of the sunspot number during the declining phase of this solar cycle. Separating the CMEs according to their linear speed, their width and their kinetic energy a detailed study during the rising and the declining phase of the solar cycle 23 has been performed. Moreover, a correlative analysis of all these properties of CMEs and all registered solar proton enhancements (SPEs) with proton flux>0.1 pfu at energy>10 MeV measured at the Earth’s orbit during this time period, is also presented.