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[38.07] Comparison of the Stream Structure and Coronal Sources of the Solar Wind during the April 7th and May 12th, 1997 Halo CMEs

C. N. Arge (AFRL/Space Vehicles Directorate), J. G. Luhmann (Space Sciences Laboratory/University of California Berkeley)

We report on our efforts to model the ambient solar wind out to 1AU around the times of the April 7 and May 12, 1997 halo coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and to identify their coronal source regions. We use the simple physics and empirical based Wang-Sheeley-Arge (WSA) model driven by two different sets of updated photospheric field synoptic maps to accomplish this: daily updated maps from Mount Wilson Solar Observatory and updated SOHO/MDI maps constructed with the Schrijver et al. flux transport data assimilation algorithm. The results generated by the WSA model for each event are then compared with the WIND satellite observations near Earth, as well as with each other. We find that the model describes the observed ambient solar wind stream structure of the May 12, 1997 CME generally well, except for the ejecta itself, while it fails to capture the moderately high-speed ambient stream that followed behind the April 7th CME ejecta. In this investigation, we attempt to understand these findings by comparing in detail the WSA modeling results, the solar wind data at L1, and the solar disk data.

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #2
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