Improving Solar Wind Predictions Using Multi-Point Observations

The solar wind is an important component of space weather that serves as a backdrop for solar coronal disturbances like coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and energetic particles to propagate towards Earth’s orbit. Forecasting space weather requires an understanding of the physical processes that occur in the solar wind plasma background. We perform simulations of the 3D global heliosphere using an empirically driven MHD model developed within the framework of the Multi-Scale Fluid-Kinetic Simulation Suite (MS-FLUKSS) using photospheric magnetograms as input. We compare our 3D time-dependent solar wind simulations with the data from the PSP, SolO, STEREO-A, ACE and WIND missions, with an emphasis on stream interaction regions that are one of the key drivers of space weather. We discuss the sources of error and possible ways to improve the model. These multi-point comparisons help to improve our understanding of the solar wind acceleration and to optimize our data-driven MHD model for space weather predictions.