Research

This project is a continuation of the research conducted under the EU FP7 projects SOTERIA and COMESEP. The aim is to improve the space weather tools developed under these projects and to consolidate them into a single SolarSoft package for broad solar physics and space weather related applications (the SolarSoft package is available here).

The research is related to the propagation and space weather effects of coronal mass ejections. Coronal mass ejections are expulsions of magetoplasma from the solar corona that propagate trough the heliosphere. If they arrive to Earth they can cause the geomagnetic storms and a number of harmful effects to the human technologies. They can cause spacecraft disruptions and shutdown, problems in the electric network grid, degradation of pipelines, increased radiation dosage for astronauts and transpolar flight crews…

 

The understanding and forecast of coronal mass ejection propagation and their interaction with geomagnetic field and charged particles are therefore essential issues of space weather. The scientists from Hvar Observatory have developed forecast tools for propagation of coronal mass ejections (DBM), their geo-effectiveness (CGeFT) and GCR-effectiveness (FDFT). In the scope of this project we improved and further developed these tools. Furthermore, we implemented these tools as a single package that can run within the SolarSoft. The package consists of a series of routines which make a space weather prediction using DBM, CGeFT and FDFT by running an interactive main program "hvar" and are available here.

By achieving the scientific goals of this project we not only contribute to the space weather research but also add to the competitiveness and visibility of the young researchers which constitute the project team, in agreement with the strategic plans of the European Social foud, which funded the project.