About SolarCISM
CISM (Center for Integrated Space weather Modeling)
is an NSF-supported
Science and Technology Center (STC).
The Center is headed by
Boston University Center for Space
Physics, under Director Professor W.J. Hughes.
The goal of the center is to produce a coupled model of space
weather, or the conditions in space between the Sun and the
Earth related to solar activity, that is so physically realistic
that it can be used for space weather analyses and forecasting.
Most realistic models available today involve major numerical simulations
that focus on pieces of the system, rather than the whole.
Thus they are limited by their incomplete descriptions of what
happens at and beyond their boundaries.
The pieces of the space weather system are illustrated by the
diagram below. The Sun is at the root of space weather through
its emission of light, charged particles, and magnetic fields.
These all interact with the shielding magnetospheric "bubble"
produced by Earth's magnetic field, and with the Earth's atmosphere.
The reactions to the above solar inputs are multi-faceted, and are
part of the physics of the numerical models. CISM's approach
takes state-of-the-art models of these pieces and integrates
them by coupling them together. The result will be a space
weather model that functions like a tropospheric weather
model, but covers a much larger region of space and much
broader scope of physical systems.
The developed models of the solar and interplanetary aspects of
the space weather system are in their infancy relative to
the other parts. The basic modules of this part of the chain
are the corona, or solar atmosphere, model, and the solar wind
model, which are coupled to each other, and eventually will be
coupled to a magnetosphere/upper atmosphere coupled model.
It is now possible to numerically simulate
the solar wind to first order, for solar minimum activity (sunspot
minimum) conditions, but the solar maximum solar wind remains
a challenge. In particular, the
important outbursts of coronal material called Coronal Mass
Ejections, or CMEs, that occur with greatest frequency at
solar maximum and drive magnetic storms at Earth, are the
holy grail of space weather modelers.
The Space Sciences Laboratory
at the University of California, with Science Applications
International Corporation, and CIRES at the University of
Colorado, lead the effort to meet this challenge within CISM,
with the help of a national consortium of
institutions and members.
ABOVE: The coupled space weather system -
Sun/Corona-> Solar Wind-> Magnetosphere <-> Upper Atmosphere/Ionosphere
Picture credits:
(LEFT) image obtained by the NRL Extreme Ultraviolet Spectroheliograph (R. Tousey,
P.I.) on the Skylab Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM) on December 19, 1973;
(CENTER) art by K. Endo, copyright Nikkei Science Inc., Japan;
(RIGHT) UV image from the Dynamics Explorer mission (UV Imager PI, L.A. Frank, University of Iowa).
