Abstract This is a study designed to analyze the relationship between ground level enhancements (GLEs) and their associated solar active regions during solar cycles 22 and 23. Results show that 90.3% of the GLE events that are investigated are accompanied by X-class flares, and that 77.4% of the GLE events originate from super active regions. It is found that the intensity of a GLE event is strongly associated with the specific position of an active region where the GLE event occurs. As a consequence, the GLE events having a peak increase rate exceeding 50% occur in a longitudinal range from W20˚ to W100˚. Moreover, the largest GLE events occur in a heliographic longitude at roughly W60˚ . Additionally, an analysis is made to understand the distributional pattern of the Carrington longitude of the active regions that have generated the GLE events.

Keywords Sun: particle emission — Sun: flares — Sun: sunspots

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