Heliophysics Science Division
Sciences and Exploration Directorate - NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

June 15, 2018, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm

July 20, 2018, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm, SED Director's Seminar, Hosted by the Heliophysics Science Division (670)



Magnetic Energy Storage and Explosive Release in the Solar Atmosphere


C. Richard DeVore (674)

Understanding how magnetic energy is stored and explosively released in the Sun?s atmosphere is central to understanding the origin of solar eruptions, which span a vast range of scales from tiny jets to giant coronal mass ejections and powerful flares. Filaments/prominences are now recognized as playing crucial roles in energy storage and release across all of these phenomena. The integrated research program of our H-ISFM team employs theory, numerical simulation, and data analysis and interpretation to understand better the formation, evolution, and eruption of filament channels and their accompanying filaments. Recent advances and work in progress on these challenging problems will be presented.


Understanding Coronal Heating and the Solar Spectral Irradiance


James A. Klimchuk (671)

Explaining why the Sun?s corona is three orders of magnitude hotter than the underlying solar surface remains one of the great unsolved problems in space science. The solution has great importance other than satisfying our intellectual curiosity. First, magnetic reconnection plays a key role in coronal heating, and because it is fundamental to many other phenomena---on the Sun, elsewhere within the heliosphere, and throughout the universe---insights gained about coronal heating will have widespread applicability. Second, coronal heating is the source of variable UV and X-ray emission, which a crucial input to the ionosphere-thermosphere-mesosphere system and a driver of space weather. Determining the properties and causes of coronal heating will allow us to build realistic models of solar active regions and predict the solar spectral irradiance. We have assembled a team of theoretical and observational experts to make major advances on these important fronts. I will describe the different interrelated approaches that we are using and present some of our initial results.


Bringing together theory, models, and data to determine the causes and consequences of ionospheric outflow


Alex Glocer (673)

The Earth?s magnetosphere is formed by the complex interaction of the solar wind with our planet?s magnetic field and as such has no intrinsic source of plasma. All the matter within it enters the system from the ionosphere and solar wind. Since the earliest measurements of O+ in the magnetosphere by Shelley et al. (1972), a quantitative measure of how much ionospheric plasma is transported to the magnetosphere and potentially lost from the Earth?s atmosphere, the issue of ionospheric escape has been of keen scientific interest. Many modeling and data studies have demonstrated the presence of plasma of ionospheric origin in the magnetosphere and its importance in governing magnetospheric processes. For example, it has implications for magnetospheric convection, magnetic reconnection, and the trapped radiation in the inner magnetosphere among other impacts. However, our theoretical understanding of outflow and its importance has not yet been fully implemented in data-tested models or become standard in magnetospheric studies. This work package brings together theory, models, and data to understand the causes and consequences of outflow to address this important topic.