Authors: Gergely Koban (University of Michigan), Judit Szente (University of Michigan), Bart van der Holst (University of Michigan)

The goal of this study is to assess the coronal modelling capabilities of the Space Weather Modeling Framework’s Alfven Wave Solar atmosphere Model (SWMF/AWSoM) throughout solar cycles 24 and 25, and to study the long-term variability of coronal emission as observed with the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (SDO/AIA).

In pursuit of these objectives, we developed a comprehensive database of solar corona and inner heliosphere simulations using ADAPT/GONG magnetic maps as inner boundary. We used SolarSoft’s FORWARD tool to create synthetic images of the solar corona. Then, using a thresholding technique we divided the on-disk regions into 3 components: Coronal Holes (CH), Active Regions (AR), and Quiet Sun (QS). The accuracy of the AWSoM model was evaluated by comparing the synthetic images produced by the model to the AIA observations from the same time across six AIA channels (94 Å, 131 Å, 171 Å, 193 Å, 211 Å, and 335 Å). Additionally, we compared the AWSoM 1 AU solar wind plasma parameter output to the available OMNI dataset to provide more information on the goodness of the simulations on a heliospheric scale.

We find that AWSoM results follow the same trends that can be seen in all of the AIA channels when estimating the coverage of CH, AR and QS regions. We also found that the model underperforms before solar maximums. AR region distributions are more accurately reproduced and identified with our technique than CH regions.