Provides forecasters with one-to-four-day advance warning of ‘solar storms’
A coronal mass ejection (CME) in a model; the CME is the gray cloud toward the lower right. |
From NSF:
The first large-scale, physics-based space weather prediction model is transitioning from research into operation.
Scientists affiliated with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling (CISM) and the National Weather Service reported the news today at the annual American Meteorological Society (AMS) meeting in Seattle, Wash.
The model will provide forecasters with a one-to-four day advance warning of high speed streams of solar plasma and Earth-directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These streams from the Sun may severely disrupt or damage space- and ground-based communications systems, and pose hazards to satellite operations.
CISM is an NSF Science and Technology Center (STC) made up of 11 member institutions. Established in 2002, CISM researchers address the emerging system-science of Sun-to-Earth space weather.
The research-to-operations transition has been enabled by an unprecedented partnership between the Boston University-led CISM and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Space Weather Prediction Center.
“It’s very exciting to pioneer a path from research to operations in space weather,” says scientist Jeffrey Hughes of Boston University, CISM’s director. “The science is having a real impact on the practical problem of predicting when ‘solar storms’ will affect us here on Earth.”
The development comes in response to the growing critical need to protect the global communications infrastructure and other sensitive technologies from severe space weather disruptions.
This transition culminates several years of close cooperation between CISM and its partner organizations to integrate, improve and validate a model for operational forecast use.
“This milestone represents important scientific progress, and underscores the effectiveness of NSF’s Science and Technology Centers in applying research results to real-world problems,” says Robert Robinson of NSF’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which funds CISM.
CISM team members worked on-site with scientists and forecasters at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center to improve models and visualizations.
Having key team members co-located during this critical phase of development enabled an ongoing discussion between forecasters and scientists that enhanced the development of the model, says Hughes, and ultimately led to NOAA’s decision to bring it into operation as the first large-scale physics-based space weather model.
CISM’s research and education activities center on developing and validating physics-based numerical simulation models that describe the space environment from the Sun to the Earth.
The models have important applications in understanding the complex space environment, developing space weather specifications and forecasts, and designing advanced tools for teaching, Hughes says.
CISM partners include the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, NASA’s Community Coordinated Modeling Center, and the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.
The lead model developers for the work are CISM team members Dusan Odstrcil of George Mason University and Nick Arge of the Air Force Research Lab.
-NSF-
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vukcevic says:
January 28, 2011 at 9:20 am
I think you got many things wrong there, quote is clear enough:
Hironori Shimazua, MotohikoTanaka: A flux rope requires a large electric current to maintain its magnetic field…..
The paper does not deal with magnetic clouds at all.
In general it is the magnetic field and the plasma movements that determine the current and the electric field and not the other way around.
Themis space mission has found that changes propagate far in excess of the Alfven speeds
That paper has been withdrawn by its authors. The classical picture was correct after all.
Tesla is correct about propagation of electro-magnetic changes, while ‘Alfven’ is wrong once again.
Tesla did not know about MHD.
pochas says:
January 28, 2011 at 9:27 am
Those arched structures visible near the solar surface are magnetic flux ropes, are they not? If not, how would you characterize them?
No, they are just ordinary field lines illuminated by plasma stuck on them.
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 28, 2011 at 9:40 am
That paper has been withdrawn by its authors. The classical picture was correct after all.
What paper? I just updated my web page
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Aurora.htm
with the link from NASA with details of the event clearly quoting 60sec.
vukcevic says:
January 28, 2011 at 10:55 am
with the link from NASA with details of the event clearly quoting 60sec.
The current disruption model is out of favor, and reconnection rules.
In the magnetosphere the Alfven speed is large [because B is large], typically 500 km/sec, and even larger when the tail is loaded up with field [energy stored before a substorm].
Leif Svalgaard says:
January 28, 2011 at 11:19 am
The current disruption model is out of favor, and reconnection rules.
Reminds of the AGW: Natural climate change is out of favour, and CO2 rules.
But also the Alfven velocity is reversely proportional to the total energy density of plasma particles, which is high at reconnection.
Seems to me another case of adjusting theory as required for purpose of the argument.
vukcevic says:
January 28, 2011 at 11:58 am
The current disruption model is out of favor, and reconnection rules.
This is what the Themis group themselves assert.
But also the Alfven velocity is reversely proportional to the total energy density of plasma particles, which is high at reconnection.
The Alfven speed is proportional to the magnetic field strength and inversely proportional to the square root of the density. These parameters vary a lot within the magnetosphere. Near the Earth [out to 10 radii] the speed is very high, 50,000 km/sec, falling to about 100 km/sec way down the tail. A typical median speed is about the 500 km/sec I quoted.
Seems to me another case of adjusting theory as required for purpose of the argument.
Just telling you what the physics is.
And what do you make about space ribbon untangling itself?
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/?media_id=18750415
You said it CR and galactic field do not vary over short period of few months. Since solar wind was low during last 2 years, I suggest heliopause is pushed against bow shock boundary by a CME.
I’m delighted by the idea of producing useful models.
I’ll be interested to learn if they can achieve their goal. Until recently the Global Climate Models used grid cells of hundreds of kilometers. More recently supercomputer advances produced the ability to model with smaller gridcells. A report I read on the internet but can’t relocate after a hard disk crash, indicated that the oucome of models with finer gridcells was significantly different to that of the coarser models. I particularly regret the loss since I understood the finer models to be less alarmist than the earlier models.
Given the enormously greater surface area of the sun compared to earth, the gridcells must be correspondingly larger. I’m not deluded into thinking they are modelling the same phenomena, but if terrestrial weather systems are a reasonable analogue to solar, then it seems the forecasts must suffer in similar fashion for the same reasons.
vukcevic says:
January 28, 2011 at 1:23 pm
And what do you make about space ribbon untangling itself?
Because of solar rotation plasma is emitted at different speeds in any given direction. Faster wind will scoop up slower wind and corotating shocks will form that will steepen as they move outwards. In the outer reaches of the heliosphere we will then get a series of high-density and high-field ‘pancakes’ where the pressure that they will exert varying by a factor of a hundred or more. The heliopause is thus buffeted from the inside as the interstellar medium does not vary on a human time scale. Anything that cause a speed differential contributes to this buffeting. At low solar activity the major contribution is the recurrent sector structure, while at solar maximum CMEs are responsible for most of the shocks. The high-density shocks ‘paint’ the heliopause in a pattern that reflects their recurrence. The shocks also scatter cosmic rays and thus are responsible for most of the variation in GCR intensity that we observe, as we explained long ago http://www.leif.org/EOS/Nature/262766a0.pdf so near solar minimum the CME contribution is very minor, the dominant features being the corotating structures.