The role played by coronal holes in solar wind forecasting

The space between the planets in our solar system is not empty but is filled with smaller pieces of the Sun itself. The discovery that the outermost part of the Sun`s atmosphere, the solar corona, expands much further into interplanetary space in form of the so-called solar wind is a milestone in the history of modern astronomy. The solar wind is an ever-changing stream of charged particles carrying the solar magnetic field away from the Sun enveloping our planet Earth. Earth`s magnetic field is frequently disturbed by the interaction with solar wind flows and fields causing geomagnetic storm activity. Severe geomagnetic storms are a challenge for the infrastructure of our modern society relying on spaceborne technology. This emphasises that accurate forecasts of background solar wind streams are of great importance in successful space weather awareness. Here we will use observational data from recent spacecraft missions to detect the source regions of fast solar wind flows, so-called coronal holes and link their physical properties to the solar wind flow in the near- Earth environment. We will systematically study the results on the basis of newly proposed solar wind model approaches and compare their performance to existing state-of-the-art models. From the here proposed research we expect new insight into the physical properties of coronal holes and valuable information on their role played in solar wind forecasting. This research project will be carried out by Martin A. Reiss at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and at the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

No additional funding sources recorded.