Speaker
Description
Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are the main drivers of interplanetary shocks and space weather disturbances. CMEs propagate in the solar wind and interact with its magnetic field. This interaction can modify the CME magnetic field configuration. One of the key parameters that determines the geo-effectiveness of the CME is its internal magnetic configuration. Strong CMEs directed towards Earth can severely impact our planet, and their prediction can mitigate possible damage. Thus, efficient space weather prediction tools are necessary to produce timely forecasts for the CME's arrival at Earth and their strength upon arrival.
We recently obtained a complete 3D MHD modelling chain from Sun to Earth using COCONUT to reconstruct the coronal model and Icarus to model the inner heliosphere. COCONUT (Perri et al. 2022) is a 3D global MHD model that covers the domain from the solar surface to 0.1 AU. The model is coupled to the heliospheric models EUHFORIA and Icarus. The implemented source terms, such as radiative losses, thermal conduction, and approximated coronal heating, allow a bi-modal solar wind configuration at the outer boundary, making the model suitable for space weather purposes (Baratashvili et al.2025).
The novel heliospheric model Icarus (Verbeke et al. 2022, Baratashvili et al. 2022), implemented within the framework of MPI-AMRVAC (Xia et al. 2018), introduces new capabilities to model the heliospheric solar wind and actual CME events. Ideal MHD equations are solved in the co-rotating reference frame with the Sun. Advanced techniques, such as adaptive mesh refinement and gradual radial grid stretching, are implemented to optimise the simulations. The most significant advantage of the AMR in MPI-AMRVAC is that one can design the refinement criteria according to the purpose of the simulation run. The COCONUT model was coupled with the Icarus model to reconstruct the entire Sun to Earth domain (Baratashvili et al. 2024).
The modelled solar wind structure depends on the setup of the coronal model. In this study, we investigate the effect of the inner boundary conditions on the obtained solar wind. We compare the coronal configuration when starting the simulation at the base of the solar corona to the simulations including the transition region in the domain. Further, we compare the different coronal heating mechanisms to assess the most realistic solar wind reconstruction capabilities.
To validate the various coronal model setups, the output from the COCONUT model is used to simulate the heliosphere with Icarus. The modelled solar wind is then compared to in situ measurements from different coronal model configurations. This process helps identify the most suitable approach for space weather modelling.
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