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Solar Flares

About the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory

The Mauna Loa Solar Observatory (MLSO) occupies part of the NOAA Mauna Loa research site located on the flank of Mauna Loa at an elevation of 3440 meters on the island of Hawaii. It is operated by the High Altitude Observatory, a division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is located in Boulder, Colorado.

Geospace response to an extreme solar flare

Solar flare effects on magnetospheric convection and ionospheric potential.
Friday, June 18, 2021

Solar flares—a sudden eruption of electromagnetic radiation at the Sun—are known to have significant impacts on Earth’s upper atmosphere and ionosphere, but their collective effects on geospace as an integrated system have never been examined.

Simulating Properties of “Seasonal” Variability in Solar Activity And Space Weather Impacts

The Van-Allen Radiation belt electron
Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Solar short-term, quasi-annual variability within a decadal sunspot-cycle has recently been observed to strongly correlate with major class solar flares, resulting into quasi-periodic space weather “seasons”.

Responses of the Thermosphere and Ionosphere System to Concurrent Solar Flares and Geomagnetic Storms

Graphic depicting simulated vertical E x B drift velocity
Wednesday, July 1, 2020

We conducted numerical simulations to examine dayside thermosphere and ionosphere responses to concurrent solar flares and a geomagnetic storm during September 6th – September 11th, 2017, as well as the interplay of flare and storm effects.

Ryan French

Submitted by whawkins on April 21, 2020 - 8:55am

Ryan French is a visiting scientist in the High Altitude Observatory (HAO) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Ryan is from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) at University College London (UCL), where he is a PhD student under the supervision of Prof.

Bo Xiong

Submitted by whawkins on April 9, 2020 - 12:35pm

Bo Xiong is a scientific visitor at the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He is working on the investigation of ionospheric physics.

Space storms that go off-scale

Image of Hydrogen-α solar spectroheliogram

Terrestrial and space weather storm scales have a common shortcoming: The scales end at “5.” Nature of course doesn’t know this and sometimes produces a disturbance that is simply off the charts.

Global simulation of Mars upper atmospheric effects of the 10 1 September 2017 solar flare

MGITM-calculated horizontal distributions
Friday, August 24, 2018

Wang and others present a global, time-dependent simulation of the Mars upper atmospheric responses to an X8.2-class solar flare event on 10 September 2017.

Anna Malanushenko

Submitted by whawkins on July 12, 2016 - 3:27pm

Anna Malanushenko is a Project Scientist I in the High Altitude Observatory and the Advanced Study Program for the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Her primary research interests are in Solar Transients and Space Weather.

Paul Bryans

Submitted by whawkins on July 7, 2016 - 2:05pm

Paul is a Project Scientist in the High Altitude Observatory at NCAR. He received his PhD on the spectral emission of non-Maxwellian plasmas from the University of Strathclyde in the UK in 2005.

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The National Center for Atmospheric Research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.