NASA/NOAA MOU Annex Final Report: Evaluating Model Advancements for Predicting CME Arrival Time

The purpose of this project was to assess improvements in CME arrival time forecasts at Earth using the Air Force Data Assimilative Photospheric Flux Transport (ADAPT) model driven by data from the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) ground observatories. These outputs are then fed into the coupled Wang-Sheeley-Arge (WSA) - ENLIL model and compared to an operational version of WSA-ENLIL (without ADAPT). SWPC selected a set of 38 historical events over the period of five years from 2012--2014 (33 events) and 2017--2019 (5 events). The overall three-year project consisted of multiple simulation validation studies for the entire event set (1292 simulations): (a) benchmark single map (operational version prior to May 2019) (b) time-dependent sequence of GONG maps driving WSA-ENLIL with 4 different model settings (c) single test simulation of a time-dependent sequence of GONG maps driving ADAPT-WSA-ENLIL (d) single GONG map driving ADAPT-WSA-ENLIL (e) time-dependent sequence of GONG maps driving ADAPT-WSA-ENLIL. We report that for all 38 events, within each model version/settings combination, the CME arrival time error decreased by 0.2 to 0.9 hours when using a sequence of time-dependent zero-point corrected magnetograms compared to using single magnetogram input. Overall, for all events, when using the older uncorrected magnetograms, the CME arrival time error increased for all new model versions/settings combination compared to the benchmark. Notably for the 5 events in the period 2017--2019 when more reliable zero-point corrected magnetograms were available, the ADAPT-WSA-ENLIL (median arrival realization) CME arrival time error decreased against all benchmarks. In this report we also discuss replicating the operational model, challenges in detecting CME arrival in simulations, and comparing zero-point corrected and uncorrected magnetogram inputs.