Combining Broadband Irradiance Measurements and Plasma Temperature Approximations to Generate Solar EUV Spectra

Soft x-ray and EUV radiation from the Sun is absorbed by and ionizes the atmosphere, creating both the ionosphere and thermosphere. Temporal changes in irradiance energy and spectral distribution can have profound impacts on the ionosphere, impacting technologies such as satellite drag and radio communication. Because of this, it is necessary to estimate and predict changes in Solar EUV spectral irradiance. Ideally, this would be done by direct measurement but the high cost of solar EUV spectrographs makes this prohibitively expensive. Instead, scientists must use data driven models to predict the solar spectrum for a given irradiance measurement. In this study, we further develop the Synthetic Reference Spectral Irradiance Model (SynRef). The SynRef model, which uses broadband EUV irradiance data from the MAVEN EUVM at Mars, was created to mirror the SORCE XPS model which uses data from the TIMED SEE instrument and the SORCE XPS instrument at Earth. Both models superpose theoretical Active Region and Quiet Sun spectra generated by CHIANTI to match daily measured irradiance data, and output a modeled solar EUV spectrum for that day. We use the broadband EUVM measurements to estimate Active Region temperature. This will allow us to select from a library of AR reference spectra with different temperatures. We also investigate how the prevalence of solar minimum coronal holes affects our measurements and how to account for them. We present this updated SynRef model to more accurately characterize the Solar EUV and soft x-ray spectra.