Like hurricanes can disturb atmospheric weather, solar storms can disturb the conditions in space around Earth, resulting in adverse “space weather”. These storms in space affect human activities, as they can disrupt key technologies such as global navigation satellite systems or spacecraft electronics. Understanding what happens when these solar storms impact near-Earth space is therefore crucial to be able to forecast space weather. In this project carried out in the Space Physics team of the University of Helsinki, we investigate electromagnetic waves generated by these storms, how they propagate and what are their effects in near-Earth space. Our goal is to identify what kind of solar storms create the strongest wave activity. Our research is based on measurements from scientific spacecraft in near-Earth space and from observatories at the Earth's surface, and on a supercomputer model developed at the University of Helsinki (https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/vlasiator).

2019

2024