Minimum variance analysis-based propagation of the solar wind observations: Application to real-time global magnetohydrodynamic simulations

The performance of the bulk of the current real-time space weather applications is dependent on the accuracy of the driver solar wind data. One of the central aspects associated with the accuracy of the driver data is the determination of the propagation delay time of single-spacecraft solar wind observations from Lagrangian point L1 to the Earth. In this work, the value of the minimum variance analysis-based solar wind propagation technique as applied to real-time global magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations is investigated. Both the method that uses the newly introduced technique for minimizing the effect of the poorly determined phase planes and the minimum variance analysis-based setup by Weimer and King (2008) along with the standard simple convection delay-based (no phase planes used) solar wind propagation technique are applied to global MHD-based modeling of the ground magnetic field and geomagnetically induced current variations. All computations are carried out in a real-time setting. It is shown by means of comparisons to ground-based observations that while the minimum variance analysis-based propagation techniques can be used to optimize the timing associated with the propagated solar wind fluctuations, the improvement is so modest that from the statistical viewpoint, the benefit over using the simpler propagation technique vanishes for the studied storm period when the information is passed through real-time global MHD modeling process.