2022/10/02 by Luke Barnard, M. J. Owens, Barnard, Luke +1 · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations #Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph) #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) #Space Physics (physics.space-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2210.00455
openalex publication_date 2022/10/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
HUXt is an open source numerical model of the solar wind written in Python. It is based on the solution of the 1D inviscid Burger's equation. This reduced-physics approach produces solar wind flow simulations that closely emulate the flow produced by 3-D magnetohydrodynamic solar wind models at a small fraction of the computational expense. While not intended as a replacement for 3-D MHD, the simplicity and computational efficiency of HUXt offers several key advantages that enable experiments and the use of techniques that would otherwise be cost prohibitive. For example, large ensembles can easily be run with modest computing resources, which are useful for exploring and quantifying the uncertainty in space weather predictions, as well as for the application of some data assimilation methods. We present the developments in the latest version of HUXt, v4.0, and discuss our plans for future developments and applications of the model. The three key developments in v4.0 are: a restructuring of the models solver to enable fully time-dependent boundary conditions, such that HUXt can in principle be initialised with in-situ observations from any of the fleet of heliospheric monitors; new functionality to trace streaklines through the HUXt flow solutions, which can be used to track features such as the Heliospheric Current Sheet; introduction of a small test-suite so that we can better ensure the reliability and reproducibility of HUXt simulations for all users across future versions. Other more minor developments are discussed in the article. Future applications of HUXt are discussed, including the development data assimilation schemes for assimilation of both remote sensing and in-situ plasma measures. We discuss the progress of transitioning HUXt into an operational model at the UK's Met Office Space Weather Operations Center as part of the UK governments SWIMMR programme.