Juan Fontenla, Mr. - Ph.D.
LASP - Univ. of Colorado
http://lasp.colorado.edu/
       
       
Session 5 - Key-note Speaker

Magnetic heating of the chromosphere and its relationship with long term trends

Juan Fontenla - LASP - Univ. of Colorado
       

The chromosphere is a very complex region involving a range of parameters and where non-LTE plays a very important role. Other critical issues are partial ionization, transition from low to high plasma-beta, and the magnetic structure and heating that are clearly observed but not understood. The Solar Radiation Physical Modeling (SRPM) project aims at understanding the physics of the chromosphere by developing and utilizing a computing system that uses all available tools ranging from observations and atomic databases to semi-empirical and theoretical modeling and simulations. These tools are used in the context of unscrambling the often confusing observations to achieve a physically consistent insight that is not yet found despite important advances. Issues on chromospheric magnetic heating and ways we can study them will be discussed together with the status of SRPM on that regard. As one of the challenges, the solar cycle variations and longer trends are an object of SRPM research by using a combination of models (highly simplified at this point) and observations (not yet as complete and high-quality as we would like) to investigate the changes and compare with irradiance observations. Some intriguing present results will be discussed.