Authors: Joel T. Dahlin (University of Maryland), Spiro K. Antiochos (University of Michigan), C. Richard DeVore (NASA Goddard Space Fight Center)

Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are the most explosive phenomena in the solar system, posing grave space weather threats to human space-based personnel and technology. Accurate prediction of these events requires a thorough understanding of the magnetic structure of the coronal source regions from which they emanate. In particular, precursor energy release events observed to precede major CMEs represent a promising avenue for prediction of the resulting space weather impacts. We present a new three-dimensional MHD numerical investigation of precursor energy release events prior to a solar eruption. We employed an idealized magnetic field profile corresponding to a bipolar large active region embedded in a background corona , and generated the eruptive twisted flux rope via a strategy of shearing followed by flux cancellation. The precursors, which took the form of coronal loop jets, occurred during a period of continuous flux cancellation, and therefore arose spontaneously as a part of the overall energy release and destabilization process. We compare these results to a model in which only shearing was imposed and in which no precursors were identified. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding the mechanisms of explosive energy release in the solar corona.