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Challenges of modeling solar disturbances’ arrival times at the Earth

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Abstract

In recent years remarkable advances have been made in the development of physics based models of various parts of the solar-terrestrial system (see JASTP special issues, October, November 2004; February 2007). In this paper, we focus our discussions in a specific region of the Sun to the Earth’s environment (i.e. 1 AU). It is well-known that geomagnetic storms are caused by solar eruptions. The consequences of these storms include particle acceleration, solar wind impact on the Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere, UV-EUV radiation effects on the lower atmosphere, etc. One of the main challenges is to predict the arrival time at 1 AU of the solar disturbance. The prospects look good for an accurate, real-time forecast scheme built on the acquisition of solar, heliosphere and the near-Earth data and large-scale models. However, the accuracy of these models still needs improvement. We will discuss the present status of the models and challenges to improve the simulation models.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL, 35899, USA

    S. T. Wu, Ai-Hua Wang, C. D. Fry, Chin-Chun Wu & Murray Dryer

  2. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL, 35899, USA

    S. T. Wu

  3. Exploration Physics International, Inc., Huntsville, AL, 35806, USA

    C. D. Fry & Murray Dryer

  4. SIGMA Weather Group, State Key Laboratory for Space Weather, and Center for Space Science and Applied Research, Beijing, 100080, China

    XueShang Feng

  5. Space Weather Laboratory, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, 20771, USA

    Chin-Chun Wu

  6. Space Weather Prediction Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Boulder, Colorado, USA

    Murray Dryer

Authors
  1. S. T. Wu
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  2. Ai-Hua Wang
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  3. C. D. Fry
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  4. XueShang Feng
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  5. Chin-Chun Wu
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  6. Murray Dryer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to S. T. Wu.

Additional information

STW and AHW are supported by AFOSR (Grant No. FA9550-07-1-0468), AURA Sub-Award C10569A of NSO’s Cooperative Agreement AST 0132798, and NSF (Grant No. ATM-0754378); CCW is supported by NASA grant NNX07AH85G, FENG is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 40536029, 40621003, 40374056 and 40574058)

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Wu, S.T., Wang, AH., Fry, C.D. et al. Challenges of modeling solar disturbances’ arrival times at the Earth. Sci. China Ser. E-Technol. Sci. 51, 1580–1588 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-008-0266-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-008-0266-7

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