Jahresbericht 08 - PMOD/WRC

18
Scientific Research Activities
Scientific Research Activities
Overview
Werner Schmutz
Space climate, the long term influence of solar variability
on the terrestrial climate, and space weather, the short term
influence of outer space on the terrestrial space environment
are the main topics of research activities at the institute.
In most projects there is emphasis on the effects of
solar radiation. We address questions concerning the radiation
energy budget of the terrestrial atmosphere as well
as questions in the solar physics field to understand the
origin of the solar irradiance variability. The hardware projects
at the institute are part of the European space weather
activities providing measurements of the spectral and
total solar irradiance.
Beside of the relevance to the main research themes, there
is another important aspect that governs the choice of projects
to be carried out at the institute: Synergy between the
know-how obtained from the operational services of the
World Radiation Center and the research activities. Basically,
the same instruments are built for space-based experiments
as are utilized for ground-based measurements.
The research activities are grouped into three themes:
– climate modelling;
– terrestrial radiation balance;
– solar physics.
Almost all of the research projects are financed through
third party funding. Presently, we are supported by the
Swiss National Science Foundation (5 projects), MeteoSwiss
(1 project), European Framework Program FP6 (1 project),
and by the State Secretariat for Education and
Research (1 COST project). The hardware development of
space experiments is paid by the ESA PRODEX program
(3 projects).
The most recent funding obtained by the institute, starting
on November 1, 2008, is the SOTERIA project. The acronym
stands for SOlar-TERrestrial Investigations and Archives
and is a collaborative project within the first space
science research call of the seventh framework program
for research and technological development of the European
Commission. The partners are 15 European institutes
and one institute from Russia.
The PMOD/WRC contribution to the SOTERIA project
is on the one hand spectral and total irradiance measurements
of its future space experiments, LYRA and
PREMOS. The observational data will be available on-line
in near-real time to the space weather community. On the
other hand, after the launch of PROBA2, presently scheduled
to be launched in the second half of 2009, we intend
to publish an operational nowcasting of the chemical composition
of the middle atmosphere on the internet. Photochemical
reactions under the influence of the variable UV
irradiance as observed by the space experiments will be
calculated. The modeling tool is a 3-D coupled Chemistry-
Ionosphere-Climate model, SOCOLI i , which has been developed
at PMOD/WRC.
Figure 1. Hardware built at PMOD/WRC is tested for space qualification.
The PREMOS instrument is mounted on the vibration test adapter at the
University of Berne. The red cables connect the various 3-dimensional
accelerometers to acquire the response of the PREMOS structure during
vibration.