Newsletter-sep-10

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Friends

this is the second newsletter of Soteria.

Contents

Status of Deliverables

Deliverables Delivered to-date

  • WP1: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3,
  • WP2:
  • WP3: 3.1, 3.2
  • WP4: 4.1
  • WP5:
  • WP6: 6.1, 6.2, 6.6

Deliverables in preparation, due during the second year

  • WP1: 1.4(update), 1.7 (update), 1.8 (update), all KU Leuven
  • WP2: (all the deliverables are due during the third year, partial results are published online once a month)
  • WP3: 3.3 (KU Leuven, due in November, meeting in March to plan it)
  • WP4: 4.2 (HVAR), 4.3 (MTA-KFKI), 4.5 (IEEA). All due in November, meeting in April to plan.
  • WP5: 5.1 (ROB, due in November)
  • WP6: 6.3 (ROB, due in June, ready since a week, report TBW); 6.4 (CNRS, due in June, a planning meeting took place in March), 6.5 (PMOD-WRC, due in June, a planning meeting took place in March), 6.7 (ROB, past due, dependent on 6.3), 6.8 (UNIGRAZ, due in november)

WP1

The focus of management has been:

  • concluding the review of the first annual report which required intense lobbying of the beneficiaries whose input was needed
  • preparing the space weather school in Trieste.
  • collecting and reporting to the EC the deliverable reports, obtaining proper explanations when a delay was justified
  • keeping the network informed and vigilant on rule and regulations, especially regarding policies of travel and publications
  • continuous update of the electronic resources (wiki and web site)
  • coordinating activities with Helio and Europlanet under the Cassis consortium
  • Dissemination activities in coordination with Cassis (inventory of web resources for the school and the general public)

Current status of the financial expenses for year 2

Financial_Report_Sept_2010

WP2

On-line publications:

(data: SDD2007, fdSDD2007 ; images: 2007I, 2007M, 2007fd_jpg, 2007M_jpg, 2007group_jpg, 2007group_fits )

(data: SDD1997, fdSDD1997 ; images: 1997I, 1997M, 1997fd_jpg, 1997M_jpg, 1997group_jpg, 1997group_fits )

WP2 discussions at SCOSTEP Meeting, July 2010; IAU Symposium 273 "Physics of Sun and Star Spots", August 2010; Hvar Astrophysical Colloquium, September 2010

Common studies in progress:

  • Revisiting sunspot catalogs: data merging and index construction (ROB, KO)
  • A prediction for the 24th solar cycle obtained combining various methods (HVAR, UNIGRAZ, KO)
  • Comparison of sunspot group tilt angles and helicities (OBSPARIS, KO)
  • Study of hemispheric and longitudinal asymmetries (UOulu, KO)

WP3

The following main have progess in the chromospheric and coronal working package has been achieved:

  • D3.2 "3D Structure of Coronal Mass Ejections and Their Evolution in Space – Results and Visualisation Prospects" has been finished.
  • About 500 Coronal Mass Ejection Events have been identified, of which about 70 events have been modeled by applying the GCS method. The event list has been made available online, with an update soon following.
  • STEREO data archiving at Planetarium Hamburg is continuing smoothly.
  • First version of D3.3 "Initiation of Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections" has been finished.
  • A new MHS model for the initiation of hot plasma structures observed by SPIRIT/CORONAS-I has been established.
  • High resolution spectra have been reconstructed for SOHO/SUMER and Hinode/XRT observations, and tested for SDO/AIA and SPIRIT coronal images.
  • The SPIRIT/TESIS database has been made available online at http://tesis.lebedev.ru/data_access.html.
  • Data obtained from SphinX between February and November 2009 received a world-wide recognition by the publication of its measurements of X-ray fluences obtained during the very minimum of solar activity observed in 2009. Such measurements have no precedence. The light curve has been presented by EOS Bulletin of American Geophysical Union on 23rd February 2010 (Vol 91, No. 8). Four ApJ publications on analysis of CORONAS-F data have been established through SOTERIA and international collaborations.
  • All SphinX data collected during the mission are available online on three mirror servers. At present SphinX data undergo reduction to level-1 format. About 40% of the entire SphinX data files have been already reduced.
  • A SOTERIA webpage on observations and modelling of dynamic events in the corona has been established, showing results for four dedicated events.
  • The first science paper based on PROBA2/SWAP data on the initiation of a mass-off loading CME has been submitted.

WP4

The main focus of the WP4 coordination has been on the deliverables D4.2, D4.3 and D4.5 which are due in November 2010. These are all scientific reports describing performed scientific analysis of the various WP4 focus parameters and their relationship. Most of the studies are detailed investigations of the behaviour of the focus parameters during selected CME/magnetic storm events. Two meetings were held to support coordination of the deliverables. A meeting in Budapest in August, where D4.3 and D4.5 were discussed and a meeting in Hvar in September discussing D4.2. The planned meeting in Budapest in April unfortunately had to be cancelled due to the massive flight cancellations in connection with the Icelandic vulcanic eruptions.

Below is briefly described the progress and status of the five WP4 tasks:

  • Task 4.1: The scientific studies have been completed, report in preparation (D4.2).
  • Task 4.2: The scientific studies have been almost completed, report in preparation (D4.3)
  • Task 4.3: Progressing as planned. The new Dst index server has been opened to SOTERIA. New indices based on satellite magnetic measurements have been investigated on event basis in connection with D4.3. The final algorithm and the statistical analysis will be performed the next year.
  • Task 4.4: The scientific studies have been completed, report in preparation (D4.5).
  • Task 4.5:Progressing as planned. Significant progress in solar wind propagation modelling using data-assimilation into modeling methods. The validation SOLPENCO has been performed on a limited number of events, and it will be completed extending to a larger statistics next year.

WP5

The main focus of WP5 has been the development of the online prediction of the solar spectral irradiance and of the climate-chemistry model. Several articles have come out, among which one in Nature Physics. Some small meetings were held in Paris (May 2010), in Brussels (Sept. 2010) and during the COSPAR meeting (July 2010). A direct spin-off of these collaborations is the creation of the COST network on the Sun-climate connection, which is now close to being accepted. This network will federate many of the European teams that study the impact of solar variability on climate.

Task 1:  Variability in the TSI and in the ultraviolet spectrum

  • The impact of solar flares on visible light has been quantified for the first time [M. Kretzschmar et al., The effect of flares on total solar irradiance, Nature Physics, Aug. 2010]. This study shows that the total energy radiated by flares exceeds by two orders of magnitude the flare energy radiated in the soft-X-ray domain only. This remarkable result has important implications on the contribution of solar flares to the long-term solar variability (CNRS-PMOD-ROB).
  • The online prediction of the solar spectral irradiance is in progress, and a first version will be presented at the SOTERIA meeting in Oct. 2010 (CNRS).
  • The PICARD satellite was successfully launched in June 2010 and the first EUV observations from the PREMOS instrument are now imminent. The LYRA instrument is still operating well but its calibration turns out to be real challenge. For that reason, we’ve decided to use solar proxies as complements to constrain the reconstruction of the solar spectral variability (CNRS-ROB).

Task 2:  Impact of the EUV/FUV on the thermosphere/ionosphere system

  • We chaired the Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Geosphere Symposium at the general assembly of the COSPAR (Bremen, 2010), during which the latest EUV observations from SDO/EVE and PROBA2/LYRA were discussed. It was decided there to organise in Sept 2011 an international workshop on their intercalibrations.
  • The impact of the solar activity on the thermosphere through the polarization proxy has been confirmed through theoretic and experimental approaches. A paper has been submitted [M. Barthélémy et al., Polarization in auroral red line during coordinated ESR/optical experiment, submitted to Annales Geoph.]. The thermospheric ionization has been modeled through a simple energy per ion pair law. This work has been submitted in [C. Simon, et al., Mean energy per electron-ion pair in planetary upper atmospheres, submitted to Annales Geoph.] (CNRS).

Task 3:   Impact of the FUV and MUV spectrum on the middle atmosphere

  • The climate-chemistry model SOCOLi, which has been developed at PMOD, and its visualization software are ready for nowcasting. General features of the visualization software will be demonstrated (not in nowcasting mode) during the SOTERIA meeting in October 2010 (PMOD).
  • We have also obtained several results that pertain to the climate system. In [A. I. Shapiro, et al., New reconstruction technique reveals large historical variability in solar radiative forcing, submitted to Astronomy & Astrophysics] we have shown that  the total and spectral solar irradiance were substantially lower during the Maunder minimum than observed today. The difference is remarkably larger than other estimations published in the recent literature (PMOD). In [Krivova, N. A., et al., Reconstruction of solar spectral irradiance since the Maunder minimum, J. Geophys. Res.,  in press], we have participated in a model that allows the solar spectral variability to be reconstructed from the sunspot number. We are now pursuing this effort while using a dynamo model to constrain the irradiance reconstruction (CNRS).

Task 4:     Flare prediction  

  • This work at ROB has started this summer on the analysis of instrumental and background solar variability. The goal is to identify regions on the solar disk with abnormal variability as compared to the instrumental variability. From manual space weather forecasting we now that these are the regions likely to flare. This work is in progress on the basis of PROBA2/SWAP data and is carried out in collaboration with a Phd-student from KULeuven.

WP6

In the past few months the work in WP6 has focussed on the setting up of SOSEC (deliverable 6.8, Online published event and feature database) and SODA (deliverable 6.3, Online SOTERIA data service ). In both case we are happy to say that the work is nearly finished and the deliverable reports are in preparation.

SOSEC

SOSEC stands for SOTERIA Online Solar Event Catalogue. SOSEC was developed at UNIGRAZ with much appreciated support from the HELIO consortium (FP7 project including Bob Bentley and Mauro Messerotti). SOSEC can be accessed online at http://soteria-event.uni-graz.at/. SOSEC (=deliverable 6.8 is mostly ready and will be on time for is due date in Nov 2010).

SODA

SODA stand for SOTERIA Data Archive, it is a virtual observatory and is supposed to make data location & access as easy as using Google. SODA was developed at ROB from scratch when it became apparent that none of the existing Virtual Observatory technology could be easily cloned for joined by the SOTERIA partners. SODA can be accessed online at http://soteria.oma.be/demoSoteriaWebservice/query.iface . SODA (=deliverable 6.3 is now ready for massive ingestion of SOTERIA data and its deliverable report will be written in the coming weeks).

Upcoming

Deliverables 6.4 ("On-line publishing of VUV and MUV spectrum from PROBA2/LYRA") and 6.5 ("On-line publishing of chemical composition of the middle atmosphere from now- casting chemistry-climate models") depend on developments in WP5 that are near completion. The annual meeting in Debrecen will give the forum to finalize the linking up here.

In the coming weeks we will focus on Deliverable 6.6 ("Capacity building workshop") and on deliverable 6.7 ("Open source solar image viewer"). The first one will take the form of the Summerschool organized in Trieste, together with COST and ICTP. The second one is a technical development that was pending on the finalization of SODA.

Featured Beneficiaries

  • NOVELTIS: [1]
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