High-performance computational models are required to make the real-time or faster than rea^-time numerical prediction of adverse space weather events and their influence on the geospace environment. The main objective in this article is to explore the application of programmable graphic processing units （GPUs） to the numerical space weather modeling for the study of solar wind background that is a crucial part in the numerical space weather modeling. GPU programming is realized for our Solar-Interplanetary-CESE MHD model （SIP-CESE MHD model） by numerically studying the solar corona/interplanetary so- lar wind. The global solar wind structures are obtained by the established GPU model with the magnetic field synoptic data as input. Meanwhile, the time-dependent solar surface boundary conditions derived from the method of characteristics and the mass flux limit are incorporated to couple the observation and the three-dimensional （3D） MHD model. The simulated evolu- tion of the global structures for two Carrington rotations 2058 and 2062 is compared with solar observations and solar wind measurements t^om spacecraft near the Earth. The MHD model is also validated by comparison with the standard potential field source surface （PFSS） model. Comparisons show that the MHD results are in good overall agreement with coronal and interplanetary structures, including the size and distribution of coronal holes, the position and shape of the streamer belts, and the transition of the solar wind speeds and magnetic field polarities.
FENG XueShangZHONG DingKunXIANG ChangQingZHANG Yao
A new hybrid numerical scheme of combining an E-CUSP(Energy-Convective Upwind and Split Pressure) method for the fluid part and the Constrained Transport(CT) for the magnetic induction part is proposed.In order to avoid the occurrence of negative pressure in the reconstructed profiles and its updated value,a positivity preserving method is provided.Furthermore,the MHD equations are solved at each physical time step by advancing in pseudo time.The use of dual time stepping is beneficial in the computation since the use of dual time stepping allows the physical time step not to be limited by the corresponding values in the smallest cell and to be selected based on the numerical accuracy criterion.This newly established hybrid scheme combined with positivity preserving method and dual time technique has demonstrated the accurateness and robustness through numerical experiments of benchmark problems such as the 2D Orszag-Tang vortex problem and the3 D shock-cloud interaction problem.
We present a newly developed global magnetohydrodynamic(MHD) model to study the responses of the Earth's magnetosphere to the solar wind. The model is established by using the space-time conservation element and solution element(CESE) method in general curvilinear coordinates on a six-component grid system. As a preliminary study, this paper is to present the model's numerical results of the quasi-steady state and the dynamics of the Earth's magnetosphere under steady solar wind flow with due northward interplanetary magnetic field(IMF). The model results are found to be in good agreement with those published by other numerical magnetospheric models.
Solar active region （AR） 11283 is a very magnetically complex region and it has produced many eruptions. However, there exists a non-eruptive filament in the plage region just next to an eruptive one in the AR, which gives us an opportunity to perform a comparison analysis of these two filaments. The coronal magnetic field extrapolated using our CESE-MHD-NLFFF code reveals that two magnetic flux ropes （MFRs） exist in the same extrapolation box supporting these two filaments, respectively. Analysis of the magnetic field shows that the eruptive MFR contains a bald-patch separatrix surface （BPSS） co- spatial very well with a pre-eruptive EUV sigmoid, which is consistent with the BPSS model for coronal sigmoids. The magnetic dips of the non-eruptive MFRs match Hα observation of the non-eruptive filament strikingly well, which strongly supports the MFR-dip model for filaments. Compared with the non-eruptive MFR/filament （with a length of about 200 Mm）, the eruptive MFR/filament is much smaller （with a length of about 20 Mm）, but it contains most of the magnetic free energy in the extrapolation box and holds a much higher free energy density than the non-eruptive one. Both the MFRs are weakly twisted and cannot trigger kink instability. The AR eruptive MFR is unstable because its axis reaches above a critical height for torus instability, at which the overlying closed arcades can no longer confine the MFR stably. On the contrary, the quiescent MFR is very firmly held by its overlying field, as its axis apex is far below the torus-instability threshold height. Overall, this comparison investigation supports that an MFR can exist prior to eruption and the ideal MHD instability can trigger an MFR eruption.
In the solar corona, the magnetic flux rope is believed to be a fundamental structure that accounts for magnetic free energy storage and solar eruptions. Up to the present, the extrapolation of the magnetic field from boundary data has been the primary way to obtain fully three-dimensional magnetic information about the corona. As a result, the ability to reliably recover the coronal magnetic flux rope is important for coronal field extrapolation. In this paper, our coronal field extrapolation code is examined with an analytical magnetic flux rope model proposed by Titov ＆ D6moulin, which consists of a bipolar magnetic configuration holding a semi-circular line-tied flux rope in force-free equilibrium. By only using the vector field at the bottom boundary as input, we test our code with the model in a representative range of parameter space and find that the model field can be reconstructed with high accuracy. In particular, the magnetic topological interfaces formed between the flux rope and the surrounding arcade, i.e., the ＂hyperbolic flux tube＂ and ＂bald patch separatrix surface,＂ are also reliably reproduced. By this test, we demonstrate that our CESE-MHD-NLFFF code can be applied to recovering the magnetic flux rope in the solar corona as long as the vector magnetogram satisfies the force-free constraints.
