Abstract
Knowledge about the background solar wind plays a crucial role in the framework of space-weather forecasting. In-situ measurements of the background solar wind are only available for a few points in the heliosphere where spacecraft are located, therefore we have to rely on heliospheric models to derive the distribution of solar-wind parameters in interplanetary space. We test the performance of different solar-wind models, namely Magnetohydrodynamic Algorithm outside a Sphere/ENLIL (MAS/ENLIL), Wang–Sheeley–Arge/ENLIL (WSA/ENLIL), and MAS/MAS, by comparing model results with in-situ measurements from spacecraft located at 1 AU distance to the Sun (ACE, Wind). To exclude the influence of interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs), we chose the year 2007 as a time period with low solar activity for our comparison. We found that the general structure of the background solar wind is well reproduced by all models. The best model results were obtained for the parameter solar-wind speed. However, the predicted arrival times of high-speed solar-wind streams have typical uncertainties of the order of about one day. Comparison of model runs with synoptic magnetic maps from different observatories revealed that the choice of the synoptic map significantly affects the model performance.
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Notes
The offset in the temperature values is probably caused by a scaling factor used in the model to scale the output from internal values to physical quantities. When requesting model runs on the CCMC homepage, the scaling factor cannot be modified by the user.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the use of Wind data provided by the solar-wind experiment teams at GSFC. We thank the ACE/SWEPAM and MAG instrument team and the ACE Science Center for providing the ACE data. Simulation results for the ENLIL model have been provided by the Community Coordinated Modeling Center at Goddard Space Flight Center through their public Runs on Request system ( ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov ). The model runs for the MAS model were carried out by Predictive Science Inc. ( www.predsci.com/portal/home.php ). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission FP7 Project COMESEP (project n∘ 263252, comesep.aeronomy.be ) and from the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007 – 2013) under the grant agreement eHeroes (project n∘ 284461, www.eheroes.eu ). M. Temmer acknowledges the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): FWF V195-N16.
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Gressl, C., Veronig, A.M., Temmer, M. et al. Comparative Study of MHD Modeling of the Background Solar Wind. Sol Phys 289, 1783–1801 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-013-0421-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-013-0421-6