Athanasios Kouloumvakos

“We all have our time machines, don’t we. Those that take us back are memories and those that carry us forward, are dreams.” — H.G. Wells, 1866-1946

ShockSEE

ShockSEE is a project funded by the Research Academy of Findland that aims to investigate the role of shocks for solar energetic electron events with the new-generation heliospheric fleet. Widespread electron events constitute the first strong indication of the presence of electron acceleration by a wide and CME-driven shock. However, as spacecraft observations are determined by a mixture of different possible processes such as a contribution by a flare, effects of interplanetary transport, and shock acceleration, these contributions have to be quantified. SHOCKSEE aims to a comprehensive analysis of spacecraft observations, complemented by various state-of-the-art models to investigate different physical effects and address several top-level science questions.

SERPENTINE

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The Solar EneRgetic ParticlE aNalysis plaTform for the INner hEliosphere (SERPENTINE) is a H2020 project that aims to answer several questions about the origin of solar energetic particle events and to provide a platform for the analysis and visualization of high-level datasets.

SERPENTINE will focus on unravelling the causes of currently poorly understood large gradual and widespread SEP events. These events also pose the greatest radiation risk to spacecraft outside the shielding provided by Earth’s magnetic field, having thus major importance for space weather prediction. The project uses key data from the most recent European and US missions, i.e., Solar Orbiter, Parker Solar Probe and BepiColombo, which have opened completely new avenues to investigate energetic particles.

SERPENTINE platform is expected to significantly foster the further exploitation of the data from European space-borne and ground-based instrumentation and interactions between different communities during and after the project period.

COROSHOCK

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COROSHOCK is an ANR funded project that addresses one of the remaining unsolved questions in solar physics: How and where are solar particles accelerated to high energies?

We aim to answer the scientific hypothesis that coronal shocks act as the particle accelerators of the high-energy particles that produce the high-energy solar energetic particle events observed in-situ and γ-ray events remote sensed. We exploit remote-sensing and in-situ data in an integrated manner to test the shock hypothesis as the prime particle accelerator. We combine advanced coronal shock models with models that account for the physical processes known to operate in the corona and in the interplanetary medium during the acceleration and transport of particles and adapt existing advanced numerical models.

At the end of the COROSHOCK project we have elucidated the role of coronal shocks as strong accelerators of the energetic particles that form the SEPs measured in-situ near 1AU and the high-energy electromagnetic radiation prodused near the Sun and observed remotely.

EUHFORIA 2.0

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The EUHFORIA 2.0 project aims at developing an advanced space weather forecasting tool. The project addresses the geoeffectiveness of the impacts of CMEs, CIRs, and SEPs and mitigation of (part of) the damage these cause.

It also considers extreme events, but the emphasis is on improving the prediction of “normal” space weather and its effects, in particular on its applications to forecast geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) and radiation on geospace. The project thus addresses many challenging aspects of space weather that are interlinked in a complicated way from Sun to Earth and provides therefore also the potential for some scientific breakthroughs.