The Challenge of Predicting the Solar Wind Speed near Sunspot Minimum

Abstract

By applying potential-field source-surface and potential-field current-sheet extrapolations to photospheric field maps from three different observatories, we predict the solar wind speed at Earth for several Carrington rotations during 2018–2021 and compare the results with in situ observations. The predicted speeds are taken to be inversely correlated with the rate of flux-tube expansion inside the source surface, located at a heliocentric distance of 2.5 R ⊙. The results often differ markedly from one observatory to another and are very sensitive to the latitudinal position of the ecliptic relative to the narrow belt of slow wind that surrounds the source-surface neutral line. Our main conclusions are that (1) the magnetograph measurements themselves are a major source of uncertainty in solar wind predictions; (2) these uncertainties are especially large near solar minimum, when Earth is located near the rapid transition between slow and fast wind that occurs on either side of the heliospheric current sheet; (3) comparison of the derived open field regions with observed coronal holes provides a strong, underutilized constraint on wind speed predictions; and (4) the observed polarity of the interplanetary magnetic field provides another important constraint on the location of the source region.