Probing dynamic solar wind and realistic CME model with Icarus model and PUNCH observations
Space weather, a field that studies the conditions in the solar atmosphere and their effects on the heliosphere, is of paramount importance, particularly in understanding the space environment of the Earth. The main drivers of interplanetary shocks and space weather disturbances are Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). The internal magnetic configuration of the CME is a key parameter that determines the geo-effectiveness of the CME impact. The potential impact of strong CMEs directed towards Earth is severe, and their prediction is crucial in mitigating possible damage. This underscores the necessity of efficient space weather prediction tools, which can produce timely forecasts for the CME arrival at Earth and their strength (shock, momentum density, magnetic field, etc.) upon arrival.
The heliospheric model Icarus (Baratashvili et al. 2025), a product of the MPI-AMRVAC framework (Keppens et al. 2023), revolutionizes our ability to model the heliospheric solar wind and real CME events. By solving the MHD equations in the co-rotating reference frame with the Sun, we achieve a stationary solution after obtaining the relaxed solar wind in the domain for a particular magnetogram. This paves the way for injecting different CME models on top of this stationary background solar wind. To enhance the simulations, we've implemented advanced techniques, such as adaptive mesh refinement and gradual radial grid stretching.
Recently, the model was upgraded to support dynamically upgrading inner boundary conditions, where magnetograms are upgraded hourly. This way, the solar wind is no longer stationary in the domain as new information propagates from the inner boundary. Additionally, CMEs are injected on top of the varying solar wind. Baratashvili et al. 2025 found that the non-magnetized and magnetized CME models evolve differently when travelling in the steady and dynamic solar wind. With the most recent PUNCH data, we focus on a CME propagation observed by PUNCH and model it with a magnetized and a non-magnetized CME model in Icarus. The generated synthetic white-light images are compared to PUNCH observations to estimate a more realistic CME model representation. The new lessons learnt from the global heliosphere observations and modelling are discussed in the seminar.
Tinatin Baratashvili is an FWO (Research Foundation - Flanders) Junior postdoctoral fellow at KU Leuven in Belgium. She has obtained her PhD from the Centre for mathematical Plasma-Astrophysics (CmPA) at KU Leuven in September 2024 and her thesis focused on developing a novel Sun-to-Earth full MHD space weather modelling chain by developing both the MHD coronal and heliosphere models.
As a postdoctoral follow Tinatin is investigating the accurate ways of driving the dynamic solar wind and the impact on the CME propagation. She is additionally working on the global magnetic field of the dynamic solar wind with the extremely high-resolution simulations using the adaptive mesh refinement focused on the heliospheric current sheet.