SHINE: Prediction of Coronal Mass Ejections and Interplanetary Magnetic Fields Using Advanced Artificial Intelligence Techniques

Understanding and predicting violent solar eruptions and their effect on Earth is a strategic national priority, as it affects the daily life of human beings, including communication, transportation, power supply systems, national defense, space travel, and more. Due to increasing spatial and temporal resolution of solar instrumentation, researchers are facing tremendous challenges in analyzing massive amounts of space weather data, especially for the operational near real-time utilization. This interdisciplinary project advanced artificial intelligence (AI) based tools to forecast geoeffective coronal mass ejections (CMEs). A graduate student will be supported by this project and undergraduate students will be mentored. This project is co-funded by the Directorate for Geosciences to support AI/ML advancement in the geosciences and by the Space Weather program. This project supports fundamental research on advanced AI to forecast CMEs and their potential to cause geomagnetic storms near 1 AU. The objectives are to (i) employ AI to predict whether a solar active region will produce a CME and estimate its transit time, mass, and kinetic energy, and (ii) predict the orientation of magnetic clouds (MCs) near 1 AU, based on real time solar observations. Data will be used by graph neural networks (GNNs) and ensemble learning methods to combine the GNNs with other conventional AI techniques to predict orientations of MCs. The project utilizes data from NASA, NOAA, and NSF observatories, including the NSF-funded Global H-alpha Network and Big Bear Solar Observatory. The study will also utilize existing measurements and model results, which will be augmented with additional measurements derived from global coronal field maps as well as non-linear force-free field modeling. This project is co-funded by the Directorate for Geosciences to support AI/ML advancement in the geosciences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.