| Abstract: |
Over the past 30 years, solar and heliospheric physics have evolved to the point where we understand what it takes for a significant space weather event to occur. It has been known for several decades that the combination of a flare and an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME) is needed for a major storm. Many of the properties of the CME, such as velocity and direction, are known soon after release and help us make space weather predictions. However, one key ingredient that dictates how damaging a solar storm can be, namely the orientation of the vertical magnetic field of the solar cloud, is much less understood. This orientation determines the ability of the CME to reconnect with the Earth's magnetic field and release energy and particles into the Earth's atmosphere system. Unlike the other CME properties, however, the Bz component of the cloud is only known when we physically measure it at the Lagrange point L1, which gives us only 1 hour to react. A priority for solar and heliospheric physics over the next decade should be to develop accurate forecasting models of the Bz component of CMEs, which requires propagating magnetized clouds from the Sun into the heliosphere. In this talk, I will briefly discuss the need for better, more accurate, solar synoptic data to feed models that propagate magnetized CMEs and how good these predictions are.
|
