News

Mar 09
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Gabor Toth

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Dr. Toth works on algorithm and code development for space and plasma physics simulations. He has a leading role in the development of the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF) that can couple and execute about a dozen different space physics models modeling domains from the surface of the Sun to the upper atmosphere of the Earth. He is one of the main developers of the BATS-R-US code, a multi-physics and multi-application magnetohydrodynamics code using block-adaptive grids. He is collaborating with many colleagues and students using the SWMF and BATSRUS for a wide range of applications: solar corona, coronal mass ejections, magnetic storms, comets, moons (Titan, Enceladus), planetary magnetospheres (Earth, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), interaction of moons with their plasma environment (Titan, Enceladus), interaction of comets with the solar wind, outer heliosphere interaction with the inter-stellar material, etc. The SWMF is used by the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) at NASA Goddard for research as well as real-time forecasting of space weather. Dr. Toth was also the software architect for the Center for Radiative Shock Hydrodynamics (CRASH). This DoE funded center worked on modeling radiative shocks created by high energy lasers and the uncertainty quantification of the model results. He has designed and implemented of the Versatile Advection Code, a general purpose publicly available hydrodynamics and MHD code. VAC has been used by hundreds of researchers around the world to simulate various hydrodynamic and MHD problems.

Mar 09
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Michael Liemohn

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His research interests focus on understanding the physical processes controlling energetic charged particle motion in planetary magnetospheres, including Earth.  He writes and uses space plasma physics numerical models, especially kinetic modeling that resolves velocity space distributions but also large-scale magnetohydrodynamic models.  Prof. Liemohn is especially interested in the nonlinear coupling within planetary magnetospheres during strong solar wind driving intervals (i.e., system-level feedback during space storms).

 

Simulation results of near-Earth space during a magnetic storm event, showing electric current traces overlaid on the plasma pressure distribution in the noon-midnight plane and radial current density on the inner boundary sphere of the simulation domain (radius of 2.5 R_E). The three colors of the current traces correspond to different current systems: symmetric ring current (pink), partial ring current (green), and tail current (blue). Magnetic field lines in the midnight plane are shown in black, revealing that these three current systems coexist on the same magnetic field line. From Liemohn et al. [GRL, 2011].

Simulation results of near-Earth space during a magnetic storm event, showing electric current traces overlaid on the plasma pressure distribution in the noon-midnight plane and radial current density on the inner boundary sphere of the simulation domain (radius of 2.5 R_E). The three colors of the current traces correspond to different current systems: symmetric ring current (pink), partial ring current (green), and tail current (blue). Magnetic field lines in the midnight plane are shown in black, revealing that these three current systems coexist on the same magnetic field line. From Liemohn et al. [GRL, 2011].

Mar 09
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Christiane Jablonowski

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Christiane Jablonowski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering. Her research is highly interdisciplinary and combines atmospheric science, applied mathematics, computational science and high-performance computing. Her research suggests new pathways to bridge the wide range of spatial scales between local, regional and global phenomena in climate models without the prohibitive computational costs of global high-resolution simulations. In particular, she advances variable-resolution and Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) techniques for future-generation weather and climate models that are built upon a cubed-sphere computational mesh. Variable-resolution meshes enable climate modelers to focus the computational resources on features or regions of interest, and thereby allow an assessment of the many multi-scale interactions between, for example, tropical cyclones and the general circulation of the atmosphere.

Dr. Jablonowski organizes summer schools, dynamical core model intercomparison projects, teaches tutorials on parallel computing and climate modeling, develops cyber-infrastructure tools for the climate sciences, and has co-edited and co-authored a book on numerical methods for atmospheric models.

Snapshot of a 2D atmospheric model simulation showing a developing wave that is dynamically tracked by a block-structured and adaptive cubed-sphere computational mesh. Blue and red colors denote a clockwise and counterclockwise rotational motion, respectively.

Snapshot of a 2D atmospheric model simulation showing a developing wave that is dynamically tracked by a block-structured and adaptive cubed-sphere computational mesh. Blue and red colors denote a clockwise and counterclockwise rotational motion, respectively.

Mar 09
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Joyce Penner

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Prof. Penner’s research is adding the impacts of contrail formation within a global climate model. This involves following the physics from scales that treat aerosols (sub-micron sizes) to contrails (hundreds of meters) to climate (hundreds of kilometers). Computational aspects involve how to efficiently treat interactions across these scales.

Mar 09
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Mark Flanner

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Professor Flanner’s research ambitions lie in understanding large-scale energy transport in Earth’s climate system, with particular focus on the roles of the cryosphere (including seasonal snow cover, glaciers, and sea-ice) and atmospheric aerosols. To approach these topics, his research group applies and develops computationally demanding models of Earth’s global climate system. The team also analyzes large datasets generated by climate models and satellite measurements, spanning numerous dimensions of space, time, spectrum, and state.  Flanner’s group strives to improve climate models by developing numerically efficient algorithms for microphysical processes that occur on scales too small to represent explicitly in global climate models, such as crystal growth in snowpack and interaction of sunlight with aerosols and ice crystals. The group also informs climate mitigation discussions by applying climate models to estimate the perturbations to Earth’s radiation field caused by emissions of short-lived pollutants from different regions and sectors.

Volumetric absorption of solar energy in snowpack, simulated with the Snow, Ice, and Aerosol Radiative (SINCAR) model, shown as a function of wavelength and depth beneath the top of the snow column.

Volumetric absorption of solar energy in snowpack, simulated with the Snow, Ice, and Aerosol Radiative (SINCAR) model, shown as a function of wavelength and depth beneath the top of the snow column.

Mar 09
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Brian Arbic

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Brian Arbic is a physical oceanographer. His group focuses on global modeling of internal tides and gravity waves, with growing interests in air-sea interactions and modeling of surface tides and their role in Earth System processes over geological time scales.  Other interests include the dynamics and energy budgets of oceanic mesoscale eddies (the oceanic equivalent of atmospheric weather systems), tsunamis, and paleotsunamis. His group uses in-situ and remotely sensed observations, idealized models, and realistic models.  He collaborates widely with scientists in the US and abroad, and his projects include collaborations with scientists at large modeling centers, such as the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Europe’s Mercator Modeling Center, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).  He participates in NASA missions, including the Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, the Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE) mission, and the Ocean Surface Topography mission.  Arbic has been a member of the U-M ASC STEM Africa committee since 2012.  He is the principal founder of the Coastal Ocean Environment Summer School in Ghana (https://coessing.org), is the lead on the concept note for “An Ocean Corps for Ocean Science” (https://globaloceancorps.org), and a co-lead on the concept note “EquiSea:  The Ocean Science Fund for All” (https://equisea.org).

The surface expression of the M_2 principal lunar semidiurnal internal tide — the tide that arises due to the stratification of the ocean. The top panel shows analysis of satellite altimetry data, while the bottom shows results from HYCOM, run by collaborators at the Naval Research Laboratory. (Shriver, et al 2012)

The surface expression of the M_2 principal lunar semidiurnal internal tide — the tide that arises due to the stratification of the ocean. The top panel shows analysis of satellite altimetry data, while the bottom shows results from HYCOM, run by collaborators at the Naval Research Laboratory. (Shriver, et al 2012)

Mar 09
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Darren De Zeeuw

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Darren De Zeeuw is an Associate Research Scientist with the Center for Space Environment Modeling in the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering. De Zeeuw’s work focuses on MHD modeling of space physics plasmas, such as planetary magnetospheres, solar eruptions, comet environments, and the Earth’s upper atmosphere. He uses massively parallel models that run on thousands of cores using adaptive grids and state of the art numerical methods. He specializes in graphics and visualizations to interpret and communicate the findings of the simulations.  De Zeeuw also works on web tools to enable further visualization and analysis of a wide variety of model outputs.

Image of a numerical simulation of Saturn’s magnetosphere and the Cassini spacecraft trajectory which shows a comparison of boundary crossings observed and modeled.

Mar 09
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R. Paul Drake

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Prof. Drake has played a leading role in the development of two related fields of inquiry — High-Energy-Density Physics (HEDP) and High-Energy-Density Laboratory Astrophysics (HEDLA). This has grown from his scientific work, encompassing experiment, theory, and simulation in several topical areas. His work at Michigan, since 1996, has emphasized hydrodynamics and radiation hydrodynamics with an emphasis on connections to supernovae and other applications to astrophysics.