Modelling the solar wind from the Sun to Earth's orbit: new empirical constraints and time-dependent boundary conditions

This project, through novel and unique analysis methods applied to coronagraph (and other) data, aims to improve the forecasting of the quiescent solar wind and potentially hazardous space weather conditions at Earth. A ballistic solar wind model will be constrained by novel empirical boundary conditions at a point where the solar wind flow has already become radial. The application of boundary conditions at R~6Rs is unique to this project and allows the meaningful study of solar wind characteristics which are currently highly uncertain, such as acceleration. Improvements in space weather forecasting depend primarily on three related categories: (1) Better observations of the Sun, corona, and solar wind; (2) Greater understanding of the physical processes operating in the corona and solar wind; (3) Improvements in data analysis and forecasting methods. The proposed work belongs to the third category and contributes to the other two.