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NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division World-class modeling, simulation, and supercomputing in support of the NASA mission

Realistic Simulations Provide A New View of Space Weather

This unique simulation reveals high-speed jets forming in Earth's magnetosphere. These jets have been observed by the European Space Agency's Cluster spacecraft.
Homa Karimabadi, University of California, San Diego/SciberQuest

Hidden in the bright sunshine, a stream of plasma known as the solar wind flows from the Sun's corona at up to 1 million miles per hour, engulfing Earth and all the other planets in the solar system. Fortunately for us, Earth's magnetic field forms a shield, called the magnetosphere, which deflects the solar wind and prevents it from stripping away the atmosphere that protects life on our planet.

Despite this protection, some of the solar wind can still get through—and when solar storms hit, the resulting "space weather" can severely impact our satellites, radio communications, and power grids. Understanding how the solar wind interacts with Earth's magnetosphere is key to more accurate space weather forecasting, which can help us protect our technological systems from the onslaught of solar storms.

To investigate these interactions, University of California-San Diego researchers Homa Karimabadi and Mahidhar Tatineni are running innovative simulations on the Pleiades supercomputer, located at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility at Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.

While previous simulation models treated solar wind plasma as a fluid, Karimabadi and Tatineni use a method that treats the electrons in plasma as a fluid and the ions as particles—and the resulting simulations provide a more realistic picture of magnetosphere-solar wind interactions.

The simulations reveal how jets of plasma from the solar wind form in the magnetosphere, clearing up longstanding mysteries about their origin and behavior. Under certain conditions, the researchers found, these jets can penetrate much deeper into the magnetosphere than previously thought, sometimes generating huge vortices. When such conditions coincide with a large solar storm, the severity of the storm can intensify, potentially affecting cities around the world.

With continued research into the complex factors contributing to space weather, scientists aim to ultimately develop more accurate forecasts that can provide crucial time to mitigate damage to our critical infrastructure.

— Michelle Moyer, NASA Ames Research Center