Analyses of Active Region Characteristics Responsible for Solar Eruptive Events on the Basis of Observations with the Aid of Three-Dimensional Magnetohydrodynamic Simulation

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The Principal Investigator (PI) and his research team will analyze magnetic structures in the solar atmosphere before, during, and after solar eruptive events to determine the physical conditions that are required for solar active region eruptions. The PI's team will use solar vector magnetogram observations from ground-based and space-based platforms, along with a three-dimensional, data-driven, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model of active region evolution, to investigate these sources and drivers of solar eruptive activity. The PI's data-driven MHD model has been recently improved and enhanced to better impose self-consistent, time-dependent boundary conditions at the solar surface, in order to correctly input the observed changing photospheric vector magnetogram measurements. The effects of sub-photospheric convective zone dynamics are directly reflected through these surface boundary conditions.This investigation will provide the space weather modeling community with an improved physics-based solar eruption initiation model and could potentially lead to better operational space weather forecasts. Graduate students will be involved throughout this research program, as well as a summer intern student and an advising professor from Alabama A&M University (AAMU, a historically black college). The unfunded collaborating professor at AAMU will actively recruit minority graduate students to work on this project and will participate in training these students in the use of the University of Alabama's solar active region evolution model.