On combining background solar wind models and sun-to-spacecraft connectivity in the Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter era

The solar wind is an uninterrupted flow of highly ionised plasma that is accelerated in the low solar corona and expands into the interplanetary space. Wind streams develop and are accelerated at different places of the strongly magnetised low solar atmosphere, before propagating through the less magnetically-dominated heliosphere. A wide range of space weather phenomena depend strongly on the structure and geometry of the solar wind flow, as well as on specific properties of the magnetic field that it crosses.
Determining the impacts of solar wind phenomena on Earth or at spacecraft locations require being able to causally link remote observations to in-situ measurements, or to predict Sun-to-spacecraft connectivity with accuracy.
I will discuss the impact of uncertainties in the determination of the magnetic field structure, of the solar wind acceleration profiles and of the rotational state of the corona as well as of mild coronal variablity. I will also highlight undergoing developments that aim at improving these tools, both on a physics-oriented perspective and in the frame of data-driven real-time monitoring.