Abstract
[1] In the interest of quantitatively assessing the capabilities of coronal MHD models, we have developed a metric that compares the structures of the white light corona observed with SOHO LASCO C2 to model predictions. The MAS model is compared to C2 observations from two Carrington rotations during solar cycle 23, CR1913 and CR1984, which were near the minimum and maximum of solar activity, respectively, for three radial heights, 2.5 R⊙, 3.0 R⊙, and 4.5 R⊙. In addition to simulated polarization brightness images, we create a synthetic image based on the field topology along the line of sight in the model. This open-closed brightness is also compared to LASCO C2 after renormalization. In general, the model's magnetic structure is a closer match to observed coronal structures than the model's density structure. This is expected from the simplified energy equations used in current global corona MHD models.
Department
Physics
Publication Date
6-5-2009
Journal Title
Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.1029/2008JA013732
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Schmit, D. J., S. Gibson, G. de Toma, M. Wiltberger, W. J. Hughes, H. Spence, P. Riley, J. A. Linker, and Z. Mikic (2009), A novel metric for coronal MHD models, J. Geophys. Res., 114, A06101, doi:10.1029/2008JA013732.
Rights
Copyright 2009 by the American Geophysical Union.