Solar Phys (2017) 292:160 DOI 10.1007/s11207-017-1182-4 EARTH-AFFECTING SOLAR TRANSIENTS Characterization of the Complex Ejecta Measured In Situ on 19 – 22 March 2001 by Six Different Methods Arian Ojeda-González 1 · Virginia Klausner 1 · Odim Mendes 2 · Margarete Oliveira Domingues 3 · Alan Prestes 1 Received: 15 September 2016 / Accepted: 25 September 2017 / Published online: 23 October 2017 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017 Abstract This article proposes some traditional and newly developed methods to evalu- ate the properties of the magnetic cloud (MC) observed on 19 – 22 March 2001. We used physical and mathematical approaches to analyze the time series of solar wind plasma and interplanetary magnetic field data. Two methods that are commonly used to derive the MC properties, the minimum variance analysis and the Grad–Shafranov reconstruction, were applied to derive the properties of the MCs by fitting in situ measurements in the corre- sponding time intervals, as discussed in previous studies. Other methods developed by us (a travel time analysis of the interplanetary coronal mass ejection, spatio-temporal entropy, nonlinear fluctuation analysis, and wavelet analysis) are used as auxiliary tools to help iden- tify whether the event consists of one or possibly two MCs. Our results suggest that the 19 – 22 March 2001 event was composed by two MCs. Our results agree with those of other Earth-affecting Solar Transients Guest Editors: Jie Zhang, Xochitl Blanco-Cano, Nariaki Nitta, and Nandita Srivastava B A. Ojeda-González ojeda.gonzalez.a@gmail.com V. Klausner virginia@univap.br O. Mendes odim.mendes@inpe.br M.O. Domingues margarete.oliveira.domingues@gmail.com A. Prestes prestes@univap.br 1 Physics and Astronomy Laboratory, Universidade do Vale do Paraíba-UNIVAP, São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil 2 Division of Space Geophysics, National Institute for Space Research, INPE, São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil 3 Associate Laboratory of Applied Computing and Mathematics, National Institute for Space Research, INPE, São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil