Effects of Background Solar Wind and Drag Force on the Propagation of Coronal-mass-ejection-driven Shocks

The propagation of interplanetary shocks, particularly those driven by coronal mass ejections (CMEs), is still an outstanding question in heliophysics and space weather forecasting. Here, we address the effects of the ambient solar wind on the propagation of two similar CME-driven shocks from the Sun to Earth. The two shock events (CME03, 2010 April 3; CME12, 2012 July 12) have the following properties. Both events (1) were driven by a halo CME (i.e., the source location is near the Sun–Earth line); (2) had a CME source in the southern hemisphere; (3) had a similar transit time (∼2 days) to Earth; (4) occurred in a nonquiet solar period; and (5) led to a severe geomagnetic storm. The initial (near the Sun) propagation speed, as measured by coronagraph images, was slower (by ∼300 km s ^−1 ) for CME03 than CME12, but it took about the same amount of traveling time for both events to reach Earth. According to the in situ solar wind observations from the Wind spacecraft, the CME03-driven shock was associated with a faster solar wind upstream of the shock than the CME12-driven shock. This is also demonstrated in our global MHD simulations. Analysis of our simulation result indicates that the drag force indirectly plays an important role in the shock propagation. The present study suggests that in addition to the initial CME propagation speed near the Sun, the shock speed (in the inertial frame) and the ambient solar wind conditions—in particular, the solar wind speed—are key to timing the arrival of CME-driven shock events.