Coronal Mass Ejection Forecasting Using Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of a Data-Constrained Constant-Turn Flux-Rope-Based Model

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) pose a major hazard to several modern technologies that our society relies heavily upon. Therefore, their accurate prediction is necessary to mitigate their harmful effects. Data driven magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the solar wind in the inner heliosphere, along with data constrained flux rope-based CMEs, can provide improvement over the current methods of forecasting CMEs. In this work, we use a constant turn flux rope model to simulate 7 CMEs in the inner heliosphere. The initial kinematic properties of the model are constrained by the multi-viewpoint coronagraph observations of STEREO and SOHO. The initial magnetic properties of the modeled CMEs are obtained from the reconnected magnetic flux of the source active regions of the CMEs. The use of flux rope-based models to simulate CMEs give the capability of predicting the magnetic field magnitude and orientation at the Earth, along with the arrival time prediction. We compare the properties of our simulated CMEs to in-situ observations at Earth and show that MHD simulations of flux rope-based CMEs can be a suitable choice for CME predictions.