Including thermospheric processes in the Met Office Unified Model for weather and climate

空间天气包括太阳发射的所有物质和辐射，并与地球大气层相互作用。太阳耀斑和日冕物质抛射等重大空间天气事件可能会严重损害地球上的技术，例如破坏卫星、导致电网故障或扰乱无线电通信。对易受空间天气影响的技术的日益依赖意味着它们构成的风险比以往任何时候都要高。英国气象局的目标是开发他们的统一模型，以模拟、预测和减轻空间天气的影响。统一模型是一种模拟地球天气和气候的大气计算机模型，用于制作天气预报和气候预报。它目前模拟的大气层高度可达100公里。该项目的目的是修改UM的“动力核心”，即负责大尺度大气流体动力学的模型组件，以便它能够在更高的高度(可能高达600公里)对大气进行稳定的模拟。这将通过包括目前不包括在UM中的新的物理过程，并通过实施复杂的新的数值方法来实现，该方法是在申请人的博士项目下开发的，以求解得到的方程。以这种方式扩展动力核心是UM进一步发展为最先进的空间天气预报工具和研究空间天气对气候的影响的关键先决条件。

Space weather includes all of the matter and radiation that is emitted by the sun, and interacts with the Earth's atmosphere. Major space weather events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections can significantly harm technology on Earth, for example by damaging satellites, causing power grid failures, or disrupting radio communications. The increasing reliance upon technology that is vulnerable to space weather means that the risk they pose is higher than ever before.The Met Office aims to develop their Unified Model in order to simulate, predict and mitigate the effects of space weather. The Unified Model is a computer model of the atmosphere that simulates the Earth's weather and climate, and is used for producing weather forecasts and climate predictions. It currently simulates the atmosphere up to altitudes of 100km. The aim of this project is to modify the UM's `dynamical core', the model component that takes care of the large-scale atmospheric fluid dynamics, so that it can make stable simulations of the atmosphere to higher altitudes, perhaps as high as 600km. This will be achieved by including new physical processes that aren't currently included in the UM, and by implementing a sophisticated new numerical method, developed under the applicant's Ph.D. project, to solve the resulting equations. Extending the dynamical core in this way is a critical pre-requisite for further development of the UM into state of the art tool for space weather forecasting and for research into the effects of space weather on climate.