Studying aerodynamic drag for modeling the kinematical behavior of CMEs

With the SECCHI instrument suite aboard STEREO, coronal mass ejections (CMEs) can be observed from multiple vantage points during their entire propagation all the way from the Sun to 1 AU. The propagation behavior of CMEs in interplanetary space is mainly influenced by the ambient solar wind flow. CMEs that are faster than the ambient solar wind get decelerated, whereas slower ones are accelerated until the CME speed is finally adjusted to the solar wind speed. On a statistical basis, empirical models taking into account the drag force acting on CMEs, are able to describe the observed kinematical behaviors. For several well observed CME events we derive the kinematical evolution by combining remote sensing and in situ data. The observed kinematical behavior is compared to results from current empirical and numerical propagation models. For this we mainly use the drag based model DBM as well as the MHD model ENLIL. We aim to obtain the distance regime at which the solar wind drag force is dominating the CME propagation and quantify differences between different model results. This work has received funding from the FWF: V195-N16, and the European Commission FP7 Projects eHEROES (284461, www.eheroes.eu) and COMESEP (263252, www.comesep.eu).