The collaborators here intend to develop and maintain a first-principles-based comprehensive numerical code, to be called the Comprehensive Corona and Heliosphere Model (CCHM). The CCHM will simulate the 3D time-dependent structure and dynamics of the slowly varying corona and the ambient solar wind, and it will be based on the Space Weather Modeling Framework, a flexible high-performance computational tool developed at the University of Michigan. Using the CCHM, the proposing team will expand available physics models, assist researchers in using new capabilities, validate individual models, and calculate prediction skill scores, in partnership with the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC), NOAA Space Environment Center (SEC), and the Solar-Heliospheric Community.
The main features of the CCHM model will be: (i) a 3D quantitative description of the large scale structure and properties of the corona and the heliosphere at any given instant in time; (ii) the incorporation of presently available and forthcoming line-of-sight photospheric magnetic field data, as well as vector magnetic field observations, as model input; (iii) the ability to initiate simple transients, as well as sophisticated magnetically-driven solar eruptions; (iv) predictions of time-dependent solar wind parameters and the energetic particle environment at a point or an object (Earth, Mars, spacecraft) in space; (v) sufficient modularity to incorporate routines containing new or more sophisticated physics; (vi) a user-friendly web portal to create, submit, monitor, and analyze model runs (including graphics) by the general research community; (vii) faster-than-real-time capability on reasonable computational resources, yielding the flexibility for quick-turn-around runs; (viii) the ability to run continuously in a 'pipeline mode' and to describe continuous topological changes of the solar magnetic field (as long as continuous data streams from Solar and Heliospheric Observatory/Michelson Doppler Imager (SoHO/MDI), Synoptic Optical Long-term Investigations of the Sun (SOLIS), and eventually Solar Dynamics Observatory/Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (SDO/HMI) are available). The Principal Investigators intend to be active in evaluating and validating the CCHM throughout the lifetime of the project.
, which was developed principally at the University of Michigan. Our contributions to the project consisted primarily of (1) developing, improving, and maintaining the "FLCT" code, which uses the technique of "local correlation tracking" to determine the velocity field in the solar atmosphere from sequences of images of the Sun, (2) developing new numerical techniques for modeling the dynamic evolution of the Sun's atmosphere, and (3) assisting University of Michigan scientists in incorporating these techniques into their numerical models of the space environment between the Sun and Earth. One of the accomplishments of the work funded by this grant was the development of an efficient treatment of the transport of energy by electromagnetic radiation (light) escaping the solar atmosphere. This treatment allows us to evolve much larger portions of the Sun's interior and atmosphere than we could do before. The accompanying Figure shows an example of the coupled solar interior and outer solar atmosphere that can be studied using our numerical models. We believe these techniques will prove useful in future prognostic (forecasting) models of the Sun's atmosphere, and may lead to better modeling of "Space Weather", the solar-driven events that affect the Earth's space environment.
