Modeling of Solar Wind Disturbances Associated with Coronal Mass Ejections and Verification of the Forecast Results

Abstract

Solar wind (SW) disturbances associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs) cause significant geomagnetic storms, which may lead to the malfunction or damage of sensitive on-ground and space-based critical infrastructure. CMEs are formed in the solar corona, and then propagate to the Earth through the heliosphere as Interplanetary CME (ICME) structures. We describe the main principles in development with the online, semi-empirical system known as the Space Monitoring Data Center (SMDC) of the Moscow State University, which forecasts arrival of ICMEs to Earth. The initial parameters of CMEs (speeds, startup times, location of the source) are determined using data from publicly available catalogs based on solar images from space telescopes and coronagraphs. After selecting the events directed to Earth, the expected arrival time and speed of ICMEs at the L1 point are defined using the Drag-Based model (DBM), which describes propagation of CMEs through the heliosphere under interaction with the modeled quasi-stationary SW. We present the test results of the ICME forecast in the falling phase of Cycle 24 obtained with the basic version of SMDC in comparison with results of other models, its optimization and estimations of the confidence intervals, and probabilities of a successful forecast.