CME interactions with coronal holes and their interplanetary consequences

A significant number of interplanetary shocks (∼17%) during cycle 23 were not followed by drivers. The number of such “driverless” shocks steadily increased with the solar cycle with 15%, 33%, and 52% occurring in the rise, maximum, and declining phase of the solar cycle. The solar sources of 15% of the driverless shocks were very close the central meridian of the Sun (within ∼15°), which is quite unexpected. More interestingly, all the driverless shocks with their solar sources near the solar disk center occurred during the declining phase of solar cycle 23. When we investigated the coronal environment of the source regions of driverless shocks, we found that in each case there was at least one coronal hole nearby, suggesting that the coronal holes might have deflected the associated coronal mass ejections (CMEs) away from the Sun‐Earth line. The presence of abundant low‐latitude coronal holes during the declining phase further explains why CMEs originating close to the disk center mimic the limb CMEs, which normally lead to driverless shocks due to purely geometrical reasons. We also examined the solar source regions of shocks with drivers. For these, the coronal holes were located such that they either had no influence on the CME trajectories, or they deflected the CMEs toward the Sun‐Earth line. We also obtained the open magnetic field distribution on the Sun by performing a potential field source surface extrapolation to the corona. It was found that the CMEs generally move away from the open magnetic field regions. The CME–coronal hole interaction must be widespread in the declining phase and may have a significant impact on the geoeffectiveness of CMEs.