Space Weather

Space weather, the conditions and processes occurring in space that could potentially affect the near Earth environment, can include changes in the interplanetary magnetic field, coronal mass ejections from the Sun, and disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field. The effects of space weather can range from damage to satellites to disruption of power grids on Earth. In Climate & Space, scientists are developing high-performance, first-principles based computational models to describe and predict hazardous conditions in the near-Earth space environment extending from the sun to the ionosphere. To achieve predictive capability, the models run considerably faster than real time on mid-size parallel computers.