Three-dimensional MHD Simulation of the 2003 October 28 Coronal Mass Ejection: Comparison with LASCO Coronagraph Observations

By W. Manchester IV, A. Vourlidas, G. T'oth, N. Lugaz, Ilia I. Roussev, Igor M. Sokolov, Tamas I. Gombosi, D. D. De Zeeuw, Merav Opher. 2008

153 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We numerically model the coronal mass ejection (CME) event of 2003 October 28 that erupted from AR 10486 and propagated to Earth in less than 20 hr, causing severe geomagnetic storms. The magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model is formulated by first arriving at a steady state corona and solar wind employing synoptic magnetograms. We initiate two CMEs from the same active region, one approximately a day earlier that preconditions the solar wind for the much faster CME on the 28th. This second CME travels through the corona at a rate of over 2500 km s−1, driving a strong forward shock. We clearly identify this shock in an image produced by the Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) C3 and reproduce the shock and its appearance in synthetic white-light images from the simulation. We find excellent agreement with both the general morphology and the quantitative brightness of the model CME with LASCO observations. These results demonstrate that the CME shape is largely determined by its interaction with the ambient solar wind and may not be sensitive to the initiation process. We then show how the CME would appear as observed by wide-angle coronagraphs on board the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft. We find complex time evolution of the white-light images as a result of the way in which the density structures pass through the Thomson sphere. The simulation is performed with the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8c4d0155717f1b92fbb344182fe3a079225000a9

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

THE LONGITUDINAL PROPERTIES OF A SOLAR ENERGETIC PARTICLE EVENT INVESTIGATED USING MODERN SOLAR IMAGING (2011, unknown): “The existence of white-light signatures of CME-driven shocks was investigated further by Manchester et al. (2008) and Ontiveros & Vourlidas (2009).”
Solar filament eruptions and their physical role in triggering Coronal Mass Ejections (2012, background): “The process could be: emerging flux (Chen, 1996; Chen et al., 2000; Jacobs et al., 2006; Manchester et al., 2008), reconnection of field lines below the flux rope (the tether-cutting model, Moore and Roumeliotis, 1992; Moore et al., 2001), or reconnection above the flux rope (the breakout model,…”
NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF AN EUV CORONAL WAVE BASED ON THE 2009 FEBRUARY 13 CME EVENT OBSERVED BY STEREO (2009, methodology): “We would like to stress that even though the CME initiation method is not based on actual photospheric motions, it has been successful in mimicking the CME conditions once it is already propagating and expanding (Lugaz et al. 2007; Cohen et al. 2008a; Manchester et al. 2008).”
How Many CMEs Have Flux Ropes? Deciphering the Signatures of Shocks, Flux Ropes, and Prominences in Coronagraph Observations of CMEs (2012, methodology): “MHD simulations have provided further support for this interpretation by matching the location and density compression ratio between observations and model (Vourlidas et al., 2003; Manchester et al., 2008).”
The Physical Processes of CME/ICME Evolution (2017, methodology): “The currently most advanced simulations model CMEs all the way from the Sun to Earth (e.g., Manchester et al. 2008).”