Speaker
Main supervisor (name and email)<br>and his / her institution
Trevor Gaunt email:ct.gaunt@uct.ac.za, University of Cape Town, Electrical Engineering Department, Cape Town, SA
Would you like to <br> submit a short paper <br> for the Conference <br> Proceedings (Yes / No)?
Yes
Level for award<br> (Hons, MSc, <br> PhD)?
MSc
Abstract content <br> (Max 300 words)
The objective of this study is to apply the recently developed Wang-Sheeley- Arge(WSA)-Enlil Cone model for using observations of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) on the sun to compute estimates of the arrival time, intensity, location and duration of impact of the solar wind at Earth. These information together with measured GIC data from the ESKOM network can be used as inputs to develop a neural network model to estimate geomagnetically induced currents in the South Africa power network resulting from CMEs.
A number of models have been developed to study the behavior of sun, solar wind, transient events, and the resulting storms when they are directed towards the Earth. The Wang- Sheeley-Arge Enlil(WSA-Enlil) Cone model is the current state of the art model which is a 3-D Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model used to simulate the solar wind from the Solar Corona out to the heliosphere.
In this paper the arrival time duration, and intensity of a selected number of solar storms associated with CMEs are studied. We considered storms resulting from Halo CMEs with Dst less than -200 nT. The data for Halo CMEs is collected from observations of the Large Angle Spectroscopic Coronagraph(LASCO) on board Solar and Heliosphere Observatory(SOHO) satellite( http://cdaw.gsfc.nasa.gov/CME_list/). From the detected Halo CMEs we considered only those which are geoeffective. To associate the CMEs with the observed storms, we used the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) satellite data.
Once we have chosen the dates of the storms, the simulation is done for each period and the nature of the individual storms is studied. The simulation output is then compared with satellite observations of the arrival times, duration, and intensity of solar storms.
Apply to be<br> considered for a student <br> award (Yes / No)?
Yes
