SEP Modeling Throughout the Inner Heliosphere Based on the ENLIL Global Heliospheric Model
Abstract
The Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) will make SEP models available for research and operational users soon. The CCMC is making steps towards offering a system to run SEP models driven by a variety of heliospheric models available at CCMC. Understanding gradual SEP events well enough to forecast their properties at a given location requires a realistic picture of the global background solar wind through which the shocks and SEPs propagate. The global 3D MHD WSA-ENLIL model provides a time-dependent background heliospheric description, into which a spherical shaped CME can be inserted. Successive CMEs can interact and merge as they propagate in the heliosphere and the particles accelerated in these shocks can result in complex SEP events. Heliospheric models provide contextual information of conditions in the heliosphere, including the background solar wind conditions and shock structures, and are used as input to SEP models, providing an essential tool for understanding SEP properties. ENLIL simulates solar wind parameters and additionally one can extract the magnetic topologies of observer-connected magnetic field lines and all plasma and shock properties along those field lines. ENLIL "likelihood/all-clear" forecasting maps provide expected intensity, timing/duration of events at locations throughout the heliosphere with "possible SEP affected areas" color-coded based on shock strength. ENLIL simulations also drive SEP models such as the Solar Energetic Particle Model (SEPMOD) (Luhmann et al. 2007, 2010) and the Energetic Particle Radiation Environment Module (EPREM) (Schwadron et al., 2010). SEPMOD injects protons onto a sequence of observer field lines at intensities dependent on the connected shock source strength which are then integrated at the observer to approximate the proton flux. EPREM couples with MHD models such as ENLIL and computes energetic particle distributions based on the focused transport equation along a Lagrangian grid of nodes that propagate out with the solar wind. The coupled SEP models allow us to derive the SEP profiles of different types of events throughout the heliosphere. In this presentation we demonstrate case studies of SEP event modeling at different observers based on WSA-ENLIL+Cone simulations.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMSH51C2600M
- Keywords:
-
- 5421 Interactions with particles and fields;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLID SURFACE PLANETSDE: 7513 Coronal mass ejections;
- SOLAR PHYSICS;
- ASTROPHYSICS;
- AND ASTRONOMYDE: 7514 Energetic particles;
- SOLAR PHYSICS;
- ASTROPHYSICS;
- AND ASTRONOMYDE: 7984 Space radiation environment;
- SPACE WEATHER