It is investigated quantitative relations between the magnetic storm magnitude and the solar wind parameters such as the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (hereinafter, IMF) magnitude (B), the southward component of IMF (Bz), and the dynamic pressure during the main phase of the magnetic storm with focus on the role of the interplanetary shock (hereinafter, IPS) in order to build the space weather fore-casting model in the future capable to predict the occurrence of the magnetic storm and its magnitude quantitatively. Total 113 moderate and intense magnetic storms and 189 forward IPSs are selected for four years from 1998 to 2001. The results agree with the general consensus that solar wind parameter, especially, Bz component in the shocked gas region plays the most important role in generating storms (Tsurutani and Gonzales, 1997). However, we found that the correlations between the solar wind parameters and the magnetic storm magnitude are higher in case the storm happens after the IPS passing than in case the storm occurs without any IPS influence. The correlation coefficients of B and BZ(min) are specially over 0.8 while the magnetic storms are driven by IPSs. Even though recently a Dst prediction model based on the real time solar wind data (Temerin and Li, 2002) is made, our correlation test results would be supplementary in estimating the prediction error of such kind of model and in improving the model by using the different fitting parameters in cases associated with IPS or not associated with IPS rather than single fitting parameter in the current model.

Because of the small number of spacecraft available in the Earth’s magnetosphere at any given time, it is not possible to obtain direct measurements of the fundamental quantities, such as the magnetic field and plasma density, with a spatial coverage necessary for studying, global magnetospheric phenomena. In such cases, empirical as well as physics-based models are proven to be extremely valuable. This requires not only having high fidelity and high accuracy models, but also knowing the weakness and strength of such models. In this study, we assess the accuracy of the widely used Tsyganenko magnetic field models, T96, T01, and T04, by comparing the calculated magnetic field with the ones measured in-situ by the GOES satellites during geomagnetically disturbed times. We first set the baseline accuracy of the models from a data-model comparison during the intervals of geomagnetically quiet times. During quiet times, we find that all three models exhibit a systematic error of about 10% in the magnetic field magnitude, while the error in the field vector direction is on average less than 1%. We then assess the model accuracy by a data-model comparison during twelve geomagnetic storm events. We find that the errors in both the magnitude and the direction are well maintained at the quiet-time level throughout the storm phase, except during the main phase of the storms in which the largest error can reach 15% on average, and exceed well over 70% in the worst case. Interestingly, the largest error occurs not at the Dst minimum but 2–3 hours before the minimum. Finally, the T96 model has consistently underperformed compared to the other models, likely due to the lack of computation for the effects of ring current. However, the T96 and T01 models are accurate enough for most of the time except for highly disturbed periods.