Quantitative evaluation of solar wind time-shifting methods

Nine years of solar wind dynamic pressure and geosynchronous magnetic field data are used for a large-scale statistical comparison of uncertainties associated with several different algorithms for propagating solar wind measurements. The MVAB-0 scheme is best overall, performing on average a minute more accurately than a flat time-shift. We also evaluate the accuracy of these time-shifting methods as a function of solar wind magnetic field orientation. We find that all time-shifting algorithms perform significantly worse (>5 min) due to geometric effects when the solar wind magnetic field is radial (parallel or antiparallel to the Earth-Sun line). Finally, we present an empirical scheme that performs almost as well as MVAB-0 on average and as well as MVAB-0 for intervals with nonradial B.