Developing a Space Weather Computational Model

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Emma Eichinger '22

Abstract

Space weather is a term used to describe the changing conditions of the space environment due to the activity of the Sun. The study of space weather in the Sun-Earth system is particularly important because solar activity can cause disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field and upper atmosphere that affect technological systems that we rely on in modern civilization. This project focuses on the magnetohydrodynamic description of plasma in the heliosphere. To study space weather events in this region, we develop a simulation that applies the Total Variation Diminishing Lax Friedrichs (TVDLF) computational approach to the 3D time-dependent ENLIL first-principle magnetohydrodynamics model.