The Sun facilitates life on Earth through the radiation energy, but it also emits the solar wind, which impacts the Earth’s space environment giving rise to the beautiful auroras at northern and southern high latitudes, but also geomagnetic storms that can harm humans and infrastructure in space and on ground. Studying the ways the Sun impacts the near-Earth space and the upper atmosphere is an important element of understanding the universe we live in, but also key for mitigating the adverse effects the harsh space environment can create.
Our group at the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering focuses on physics of the Solar-Terrestrial interactions using ground-based and space-borne measurements together with the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF) global geospace simulations.
Our research group works in collaboration with our local colleagues at the University of Michigan, but also interacts with leading groups in the US, in Finland, and elsewhere in the world.
News and recent publications
2022
Olli Knuuttila, Esa Kallio, Noora Partamies, Mikko Syrjasuo, Kirsti Kauristie, Vlktoria Sofieva, Ari-Matti Harri, Antti Kestila, Jarmo Kivekas, Petri Koskimaa, Petri Karha, Juba-Matti Lukkari, Tuija Pulkkinen, Jouni Ryno, Johanna Tamminen, In-space Calibration of a Nanosatellite’s Camera, Journal of Small Satellites, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 1165–1186, 2022.
Kallio, E., Jarvinen, R., Massetti, S., Alberti, T., Milillo, A., Orsini, S., E. De Angelis, G. Laky, J. Slavin, J. M. Raines, T. I. Pulkkinen (2022). Ultra-low frequency waves in the Hermean magnetosphere: On the role of the morphology of the magnetic field and the foreshock. Geophysical Research Letters, 49, e2022GL101850. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL101850.
Al Shidi, Q., T. Pulkkinen, G. Toth, A. Brenner, S. Zou, J. Gjerloev, A Large Simulation Set of Geomagnetic Storms — Can Simulations Predict Ground Magnetometer Station Observations of Magnetic Field Perturbations?, Space Weather, DOI: 10.1029/2022SW003049
Ala-Lahti, M., Pulkkinen, T. I., Pfau-Kempf, Y., Grandin, M., Palmroth, M. (2022). Energy flux through the magnetopause during flux transfer events in hybrid-Vlasov 2D simulations. Geophysical Research Letters, 49, e2022GL100079, 2022.
Pulkkinen, Tuija I., Austin Brenner, Qusai Al Shidi, and Gabor Toth, Statistics of geomagnetic storms: Global simulations perspective. (2022) Front. Astron. Space Sci. 9:972150. doi: 10.3389/fspas.2022.972150.
Jarvinen, R., E. Kallio and T. I. Pulkkinen, Role of ultra-low frequency foreshock waves in ion dynamics at Mars, Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 127, e2021JA030078. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JA030078, 2022.
Iong, Daniel, Yang Chen, Gabor Toth, Shasha Zou, Tuija Pulkkinen, Jiaen Ren, Enrico Camporeale, Tamas Gombosi, New Findings From Explainable SYM-H Forecasting Using Gradient Boosting Machines, Space Weather, 20, e2021SW002928. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021SW002928
Cohen, Christina M. S., Tuija I. Pulkkinen, Daniel N. Baker, Anthea J. Coster, Mary K. Hudson, Delores Knipp, KD Leka, Charles D. Norton, Terrance G. Onsager, Larry J. Paxton, Pete Riley, Ronald E. Turner, Nicholeen M. Viall-Kepko, Enaawoke Yizengav, Planning the Future Space Weather Operations and Research Infrastructure: Proceedings of the Phase II Workshop. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26712.
Cohen, C. M. S., T. Berger, M. I. Desai, N. Duncan, G. C. Ho, N. Maruyama, T. Pulkkinen, A. Szabo, A. Vourlidas, E. Zesta, Y. Zhang, Living With a Star Mission Architecture. A vision for the future Living with a Star Program. NASA internal report
I joined the University of Michigan in 2018, attracted by the versatile research program in the department covering climate and space sciences, space instrument development and operations, data analysis and world-leading space environment modeling. I came to Michigan from Finland (Northern Europe), where I worked at Aalto University and prior to that at the Finnish Meteorological Institute.