Impact of Non-potential Coronal Boundary Conditions on Solar Wind Prediction

Weinzierl, Marion; Bocquet, Francois-X.; Yeates, Anthony R.

Impact of Non-potential Coronal Boundary Conditions on Solar Wind Prediction

Weinzierl, Marion; Bocquet, Francois-X.; Yeates, Anthony R.

Authors

Marion Weinzierl

Francois-X. Bocquet

Anthony R. Yeates

Contributors

Marion Weinzierl marion.weinzierl@durham.ac.uk
Other

M Weinzierl marion.weinzierl@durham.ac.uk
Other

Abstract

Predictions of the solar wind at Earth are a central aspect of space weather prediction. The outcome of such a prediction, however, is highly sensitive to the method used for computing the magnetic field in the corona. We analyze the impact of replacing the potential field coronal boundary conditions, as used in operational space weather prediction tools, by non-potential conditions. For this, we compare the predicted solar wind plasma parameters with observations at 1 AU for two six-months intervals, one at solar maximum and one in the descending phase of the current cycle. As a baseline, we compare with the operational Wang-Sheeley-Arge model. We find that for solar maximum, the non-potential coronal model and an adapted solar wind speed formula lead to the best solar wind predictions in a statistical sense. For the descending phase, the potential coronal model performs best. The Wang-Sheeley-Arge model outperforms the others in predicting high speed enhancements and streamer interactions. A better parameter fitting for the adapted wind speed formula is expected to improve the performance of the non-potential model here.

Citation

Weinzierl, M., Bocquet, F., & Yeates, A. R. (2017). Impact of Non-potential Coronal Boundary Conditions on Solar Wind Prediction. [No known commissioning body]

Report Type	Project Report
Acceptance Date	Sep 7, 2017
Publication Date	Sep 7, 2017
Deposit Date	Sep 7, 2017
Publicly Available Date	Sep 7, 2017
Keywords	Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics.
Publisher URL	https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.01730
Related Public URLs	https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.01730
Additional Information	Publisher: ArXiv e-prints Type: monograph Subtype: project_report