  More than 140 isolated non-recurrent geomagnetic storms (GMSs) of various
intensities from extreme to weak are considered, which are reliably identified
with solar eruptive sources (coronal mass ejections, CMEs). The analysis aims
to obtain a possibly complete picture of the relationship between the transit
time of propagation of CMEs and interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs)
from the Sun to the Earth (more precisely, the time interval dtp from the
moment of an eruption until the peak of the corresponding GMS) and the maximum
intensity of this GMS, as measured by the disturbance storm time geomagnetic
index Dst. Two groups of events are singled out: one includes GMSs, the source
of which was an eruption from an active region (AR events), the other GMSs
caused by filament eruptions from quiescent areas of the Sun located outside
ARs (QS events). The distribution of the large number of the analyzed events on
a dtp - Dst plane confirms and substantially clarifies the known regularities.
The AR events are characterized by a shorter transit time (dtp ~ 1-4 days) and
much stronger GMSs (Dst up to -600 nT mainly) in comparison with the QS events
(dtp ~ 3-5 days, Dst > -200 nT). For events of both groups, the shorter transit
time of CMEs/ICMEs, the more intense GMSs; in particular, for AR events when
dtp declines from 4 to 1 day, Dst decreases on average from -100 to -470 nT and
can reach -900 nT. From the point of view of the nature of GMSs and their
sources on the Sun, the obtained results mean that both the speed of CMEs/ICMEs
and the strength of the magnetic field transferred by them are largely
determined by the parameters of the corresponding eruptions, in particular, by
the eruptive magnetic flux and the released energy.
