The solar wind-magnetosphere coupling is studied by new data-adaptive harmonic (DAH) decomposition approach for the spectral analysis and inverse modeling of multivariate time observations of complex nonlinear dynamical systems. DAH identifies frequency-based modes of interactions in the combined dataset of Auroral Electrojet (AE) index and solar wind forcing. The time evolution of these modes can be very effi- ciently simulated by using systems of stochastic differential equations (SDEs) that are stacked per frequency and formed by coupled Stuart-Landau oscillators. These systems of SDEs capture the modes’ frequencies as well as their amplitude modulations, and yield, in turn, an accurate modeling of the AE index’ statistical properties.