Joint Physics Dept.–Inst. for Space Weather Sci. Colloquium

March 7, Thursday (** SPECIAL DAY**)

Prediction of Solar Energetic Events Directly from Solar Sources: Progress, Challenges, Expectations

Dr. Manolis Georgoulis

Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

(Solar Physics, Host: Haimin Wang)

Room: ECE 202

**SPECIAL TIME: 1pm - 2pm with teatime at 12:45pm

*Webex Meeting ID for those who cannot attend in-person: 2621 447 3191

(APPROVAL by Prof Ahn REQUIRED for APPH/MTSE PhD Students to attend online)

*Password: check email or request from kenahn@njit.edu

Solar weather, the solar end of space weather, is responsible for a dominant majority of concerning – quite often hazardous – radiation and particulate conditions in the near-Earth, cislunar and deep space. Predicting these instabilities all the way from Sun to Earth to mitigate their effects implies tackling an 8-order-of-magnitude dynamical range in space and time, and we are clearly not there yet. On the other hand, relying on inner-heliospheric conditions far from the Sun to forecast the impact of propagating particles and transients may have some accuracy but leads to impractically short advance warning times. With our reliance on space technology and exploration increasing, we make a case that, no matter how hard the problem is, prediction of solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and solar energetic particle (SEP) events should start from their host locations in the low solar atmosphere. We briefly review the physical rationale, methodologies, and key results of these methodologies, ways to verify and comparatively validate their performance, as well as critical data gaps that inhibit predictions. We further discuss the attention we should be paying to potentially cutting-edge AI technologies, as they have already outnumbered conventional methods in flare prediction. The potential role of AI can be transformative beyond prediction efforts if they can be used as ultrafast solvers of fundamental equations of magnetohydrodynamics to provide routine and realistic magnetic field configurations in the solar corona, where routine magnetographic measurements are intractable.

This seminar draws significantly from a just-accepted review and roadmap paper in the framework of COSPAR’s Panel on Space Weather / International Space Weather Action Teams. The paper can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2024.02.030