A Semiempirical Magnetohydrodynamical Model of the Solar Wind

Abstract

We present a new MHD model for simulating the large-scale structure of the solar corona and solar wind under " steady state " conditions stemming from the Wang-Sheeley-Arge empirical model. The processes of tur-bulent heating in the solar wind are parameterized using a phenomenological, thermodynamical model with a varied polytropic index. We employ the Bernoulli integral to bridge the asymptotic solar wind speed with the assumed distribution of the polytropic index on the solar surface. We successfully reproduce the mass flux from Sun to Earth, the temperature structure, and the large-scale structure of the magnetic field. We reproduce the solar wind speed bimodal structure in the inner heliosphere. However, the solar wind speed is in a quantitative agreement with observations at 1 AU for solar maximum conditions only. The magnetic field comparison dem-onstrates that the input magnetogram needs to be multiplied by a scaling factor in order to obtain the correct magnitude at 1 AU.