The data driven modeling technique of Mackay et al. (2011) is applied to simulate the coronal magnetic field of NOAA active region AR10977 over a seven day period. The simulation is driven directly with a sequence of line-of-sight component magnetograms and evolves the coronal magnetic field though a continuous series of non-linear force-free states. Upon comparison with Hinode/XRT observations, results show that the simulation reproduces many features of the active region's evolution. In particular, it describes the formation of a flux rope across the polarity inversion line during flux cancellation. The flux rope forms at the same location as an observed X-ray sigmoid. After five days of evolution the flux rope erupts close to the observed time of a B1.4 GOES flare.
The free magnetic energy contained within the flux rope was found to be 3.9 × 10^30 erg which is more than sufficient to account for the observed flare. Based on the initial success of the modelling technique future space weather applications will be discussed.