Understanding our capabilities in observing and modelling Coronal Mass Ejections

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

Congreso; European Geophysical Union Meeting; 2020

European Geophysical Union

Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are large-scale eruptions of plasma and magnetic !elds 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 be able to predict the propagation of CMEs and their arrival time at Earth. Such models require input from observations, which can be used to !t the CME to an appropriate structure.When determining input parameters for CME propagation models, it is common procedure to derive kinematic parameters from remote-sensing data. The resulting parameters can be used as inputs for the CME propagation models to obtain an arrival prediction time of the CME f.e. at Earth. However, when !tting the CME structure to obtain the needed parameters for simulations, di"erent geometric structures and also di"erent parts of the CME structure can be !tted. These aspects, together with the fact that 3D reconstructions strongly depend on the subjectivity and judgement of the scientist performing them, may lead to uncertainties in the !tted parameters. Up to now, no large study has tried to map these uncertainties and to evaluate how they a"ect the modelling of CMEs.Fitting a large set of CMEs within a selected period of time, we aim to investigate the uncertainties in the CME !ttings in detail. Each event is !tted multiple times by di"erent scientists. We discuss statistics on uncertainties of the !ttings. We also present some !rst results of the impact of these uncertainties on CME propagation modelling.