NASA’s Center for Geospace Storms, or CGS, publicly released the cutting-edge MAGE (Multiscale Atmosphere-Geospace Environment) model, a supercomputing powerhouse that uses NASA mission data to reveal how different parts of geospace react to solar disturbances.
The MAGE model will help space weather experts better predict how solar events impact Earth by pulling together several smaller predictive models of Earth’s magnetosphere, ring current, and upper atmosphere to provide a comprehensive picture of how geospace reacts to solar disturbances.
Access to the MAGE model is available through GitHub and NASA’s Community Coordinated Modeling Center. The CGS team has also developed an analysis and visualization package, also openly available via GitHub, to allow scientists to process results of MAGE simulations.
“The public release of MAGE represents a major milestone for CGS and the space science community,” said Slava Merkin, director of CGS at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “Our team is looking forward to working with heliophysics researchers on making scientific discoveries and helping to better predict space weather.”
Science centers and space weather
NASA’s CGS is one of three DRIVE (Diversify, Realize, Integrate, Venture, Educate) science centers. The DRIVE science centers are the first of their kind, created to encourage collaborative science by establishing centers that are made of multidisciplinary teams from several institutions across the United States. These pioneering facilities employ modelers, theoreticians, computer scientists, and observers to study important mysteries of our star and its influence, a branch of science known as heliophysics. Developing MAGE was an effort of more than 50 experts across seven institutions.
Heliophysics studies the vast, interconnected system from the Sun to the space surrounding Earth and other planets to the farthest limits of the Sun’s constantly flowing streams of solar wind. Researching heliophysics is key to understanding and predicting space weather, which is heavily influenced by solar flares, coronal mass ejections, solar particle events, and the solar wind.
Space weather events impact everyday life, from creating stunning auroral displays to potentially causing power outages and affecting communication networks to global positioning systems that pilots and farmers rely on. Space weather can also increase radiation risks to astronauts and satellites, making it critical to monitor and forecast space weather storms as plans accelerate to maintain a sustained presence on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. For example, NASA’s Artemis campaign will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.
The MAGE model in action
In May 2024, the MAGE model was successfully used to simulate how several strong solar flares and coronal mass ejections slammed into Earth, creating a geospace storm reaching ratings of G5 — the highest level reached on the geomagnetic storm scale in two decades. When these intense solar storms hit Earth and interacted with the magnetosphere and upper atmosphere, brilliant auroras were seen around the globe and even in unexpected areas like the southern U.S.
Find out more: https://science.nasa.gov/heliophysics/dsc/cgs/
