CISM

SOHO image animation (57k)
images from SOHO-EIT

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).