ACES Trainee Presentation to the ACES Visiting Committee
Sarah McGregor
Astronomy Department - Boston University
Thursday - November 29, 2007
Physics Research Building - Room 595

"Predicting Solar Wind Structures in the Inner Heliosphere"

The Wang Sheeley Arge model (WSA) is a quick running, computationally inexpensive solar wind forecasting model which makes use of the coupled Potential Field Source Surface (PFSS) and Schatten Current Sheet models
to derive the magnetic topology of the corona. The solar wind speed distribution on the outer boundary of the coronal code is determined empirically and propagated out into the heliosphere using a 1D kinematic code. Recently this model has been coupled with the ENLIL solar wind transport model. Both WSA and the coupled WSA-ENLIL model routinely make real-time solar wind predictions at the Space Environment Center and are available at CCMC. In this talk we will investigate both models predictive capabilities and calibrate the WSA-ENLIL interface using L1 and Helios observations, and extend our comparisons to higher latitudes.