Recent Progress in Modeling and Representation of Turbulence in the Global Inner-heliospheric Solar Wind

Authors: Rohit Chhiber (NASA GSFC & U Delaware)

(Draft:) Global inner-heliospheric magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models aim to represent large-scale properties of the solar wind from the coronal base out to heliocentric distances of several AU, usually in a three-dimensional (3D) domain. Such models are unable to resolve the turbulent scales of the solar wind due to computational constraints, which necessitates the use of so-called subgrid-scale turbulence models in order to account for the crucial roles played by turbulence in solar wind dynamics. While such turbulence models have a long history of use in aerodynamics and earth-science research, they remain relatively less well-studied in the heliophysics community. In this presentation we discuss recent advancements in the representation of subgrid-scale MHD turbulence in global solar wind models, and aim to address some of the questions posed by this session – Which features and capabilities of global modeling provide optimized accounting for existing observations and how can this performance be improved? How do global heliospheric turbulence transport models compare with spacecraft observations, and how can these models better meet the challenge of accurately representing the coupling of large-scale physics with turbulence? We emphasize how models can provide 3D context for in-situ turbulence measurements and help establish Sun-heliosphere connections.