Quantifying Capabilities in Observing Coronal Mass Ejections

C. VERBEKE; L. MAYS; C. KAY; M. MIERLA; P. RILEY; E. PALMERIO; M. DUMBOVIC; C. SCOLLINI; M. TEMMER; E. PAOURIS; J. HINTERREITER; L. BALMACEDA; H. CREMADES

New Orleans

Congreso; AGU Fall Meeting 2021; 2021

American Geophysical Union

Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are large-scale eruptions of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun. They are considered to be the main drivers of strong space weather events at Earth. Multiple models have been developed over the past decades to predict the propagation of CMEs and their possible arrival time at Earth. Such models require input from observations, which can be used to fit the CME to an appropriate structure.When determining parameters associated to the CME structure, it is common procedure to derive such kinematic parameters from remote-sensing data. The resulting parameters can be used as input for CME propagation models to obtain an arrival time prediction of the CME e.g. at Earth. However, different geometric structures and different parts of the CME structure can be fitted, and these aspects, together with the fact that most 3D reconstructions are performed by a scientist, creating a subjectivity of the fit, may lead to uncertainties in the fitted parameters. To our knowledge, so far, no large scale study has tried to map these uncertainties and how these affect the modelling of arrival time models.As a start for this work, we focused on the effect cause by the influence and subjectivty of the performing scientist. We have designed a synthetic situation where the true geometric parameters are known in order to quantify such uncertainties for the first time and discuss the results. We explore further work of the associated ISSI team.