Recipient organisationUniversity of ExeterSource-published name: University of Exeter
Funding£4.3M
PeriodJun 2025 — Jun 2030
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
The Sun’s atmosphere is a patchwork of layers with wildly different temperatures and magnetic behaviour, and no existing computer model can simulate all of them at once with the necessary physics. That gap matters because solar flares and coronal mass ejections—eruptions that can knock out power grids, disrupt satellite communications, and endanger astronauts—originate in the complex coupling between these layers. Current models either focus on one layer or use approximations that miss key processes. The Solar Atmospheric Modelling Suite (SAMS) aims to build a modular, open-source software framework that can run time-dependent simulations of the entire atmosphere, from the chromosphere to the corona, using non-LTE radiative transfer and magnetohydrodynamics. Users will be able to run either fast 1D models or full 3D simulations, with a clear pipeline from input to observable output. If successful, SAMS would give researchers a tool to interpret the high-resolution data from next-generation solar telescopes and exploit Exascale computing. This is fundamental science—it will not directly power a phone or heat a home—but understanding how the Sun stores and releases energy is the only way to forecast space weather that threatens the infrastructure modern society depends on.
View original technical description
Accurate modelling of the solar atmosphere is essential for understanding the energy flow and build-up that underpins the heating of the solar chromosphere and corona, and drives eruptions and flares. To achieve this a model needs to be able to capture the fundamental physical, radiative and ionisation states of the vastly different atmospheric layers of the Sun and the complex coupling between them. No model exists with the capability to accurately capture all the key processes of the different parts of the atmosphere, but one is necessary to understand the cutting-edge observations produced by new facilities and provide the much needed step-change in our understanding of how the solar atmosphere works. We propose to develop a software framework (the Solar Atmospheric Modelling Suite - SAMS) with world-leading physics capabilities designed to maintain the UK’s solar physics community at the forefront of international research and enable full exploitation of next-generation observations and Exascale computing. We will develop SAMS with a modular structure allowing users to include all atmospheric layers or a subset of layers, e.g. the chromosphere and corona, running time-dependent non-LTE radiative transfer MHD simulations as either complex 3D models or faster 1D models with a clear pipeline from input, through simulation to observable. The code will be made available to the community as Open Source under the permissive Apache 2 licence through a GitHub repository with detailed physics-based documentation to promote ease of use.
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