1. Space Weather Research at Trinity College Dublin
Peter Gallagher, Sophie Murray, Eoin Carley, Jordan Guerra, Sung-Hong Park, Diana Morosan, Aoife McCloskey,
Laura Hayes, Sean Blake, Tadhg Garton, Joe McCauley
Space Weather Research at Trinity College Dublin
Space Missions
Solar Activity Monitoring
We are involved in many international space missions:
NASA SOHO, RHESSI, STEREO, and SDO.
NOAA GOES series.
ESA PROBA-2, PROBA-3 and Solar Orbiter.
Roles include software development and data analysis.
SolarMonitor.org provides spacecraft images of current solar conditions. The website has a a strong presence within the solar physics community, and has had over 20 million hits since its launch.
Ground-Based Monitoring
Solar flare forecasts are provided daily at solarmonitor.org. Further research is being undertaken to develop more sophisticated forecasting methods as part of the EU Horizon 2020 FLARECAST project (flarecast.eu). Active region magnetic complexity classification evolution is also being explored to improve forecasting performance.
The Rosse Solar-Terrestrial Observatory is dedicated to studying solar activity and its affects on Earth in a radio-quiet environment at Birr Castle. Instruments include an e-Callisto solar radio burst monitor and a Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance monitor, as well as seismic and geomagnetic instruments. Realtime data is available at rosseobservatory.ie
Under the EU FP7 HELCATS project (helcats-fp7.eu), an automated algorithm is under development to associate coronal mass ejections to solar flare events and their solar surface sources. CME kinematics will be compared to active region magnetic properties using the Solar Monitor Active Region Tracker.
We have installed an Irish magnetometer network (MagIE) to provide monitoring and warnings of geomagnetic storms. The first simulations of the effects of geomagnetically induced currents on the Irish electricity grid have also been conducted with the British Geological Survey and EirGrid.
The CHIMERA algorithm automatically identifies coronal holes and provides daily estimates of many coronal hole properties. These properties can be used in conjunction with solar wind propagation models to more accurately estimate high speed solar wind flows at Earth.
The Irish Low Frequency Array (lofar.ie) is currently under construction, due to be completed in Septermber This will be excellent resource for space weather as well as the wider astrophysics community.
Collaborators/Supporters