Latest News
WHPI repository of 2024 Total Solar Eclipse activities
The Total Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024 offers ideal conditions for eclipse science, unique opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations, and an excellent occasion for public engagement. HAO is leading the effort through the Whole Heliosphere and Planetary Interactions (WHPI) initiative to support the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse by providing a platform for gathering information on ongoing eclipse activities. Please contact us at whpi_help@hao.ucar.edu if you have any questions or would like to be included.
MLSO uses helicopters
To prepare for the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse observing, necessary equipment was delivered by helicopter to the MLSO observatory. The externally carried cargo included 80 solar panels, 24 battery packs, 3 inverters, and all associated wiring and mounting materials. 30 flights were launched from a staging location just below the spot where lava destroyed the access road during the volcanic eruption on November 27, 2022, preventing vehicle traffic to the observatory.
MLSO UCoMP Science Data Now Available
The Mauna Loa Solar Observatory Upgraded Coronal Multi-Channel Polarimeter (UCoMP) coronagraph science data (version 1.0.1) have now been released to the community via the Mauna Loa web page.
Latest Research Highlights
Climate Change in the Thermosphere and Ionosphere From the Early Twentieth Century to Early Twenty‐First Century Simulated by the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model—eXtended
Authors Joseph McInerney, Liying Qian, Han-Li Liu, Stanley Solomon, and Susan Nossal decided to apply the WACCM-X climate model to the upper atmosphere for the decades from the 1920s to 2010s. This type of modeling application will be useful to predict what will happen in the century ahead as greenhouse gases increase and humans make efforts to reverse the increase.
Impacts of gravity waves on the thermospheric circulation and composition
Hanli Liu, Peter Lauritzen, and Francis Vitt use the high-resolution whole atmosphere model to study small-scale wave propagation from the lower atmosphere into the thermosphere. Using this high-resolution model, which can partially resolve the small-scale waves, they can directly quantify the force exerted by these waves on the general circulation in the thermosphere.
Mapping the Sun’s Alfvén Surface with PUNCH
Steven Cranmer, Rohit Chhiber, Chris Gilly, Iver Cairns, Robin Colaninno, David McComas, Nour Raouafi, Arcadi Usmanov, Sarah Gibson, Craig DeForest review the properties of Alfvén surface and discuss its importance in models of solar wind acceleration, angular momentum transport, MHD waves and turbulence, and the geometry of closed coronal loops. Simulations results and data analysis techniques are used to determine the location of the Alfvén surface.