Shasha Zou
University of Michigan, MI·Physics
High above Earth's surface lies the ionosphere, a layer of the upper atmosphere filled with electrically charged particles. It changes quickly when energy arrives from space, and those changes can disrupt radio communication used by aviation, ships and the military, as well as global satellite navigation.
- Fields
Physics
Earth & Environmental Science
Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Topics
space weather
space physics
ionosphere
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Track how the global ionospheric total electron content (TEC) changes over time during solar flares, using TEC data from worldwide GNSS satellite-navigation receivers paired with solar radiation from the FISM2 model or SDO EVE observations.
- Determine how specific flare phases, coronal dimming and the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) late phase, shape the ionosphere's response, using physics-based numerical simulations of the upper atmosphere such as GITM.
- Develop machine learning models that predict how global TEC will respond to solar flares, with the goal of improving forecasts as Solar Cycle 25 nears its peak.
- Characterize the particle velocity distributions in bursty bulk flows (fast nightside plasma flows) and how they evolve as the flows move toward Earth, using a two-way coupled MHD-PIC model in the Space Weather Modeling Framework.
- Map field-aligned currents, which flow along magnetic field lines, where bursty bulk flows reshape the field, and test for predicted dawn-dusk asymmetries and whether multiple flows and their wedgelets build the classic substorm current pattern.
- Determine how bursty bulk flows alter nightside ionospheric density structures and airglow emission, combining simulations with observations from NSF radar facilities, AMPERE and SuperMAG.
More about the research
This research studies how the ionosphere and the neutral upper atmosphere around it (the thermosphere) respond to two kinds of energy input. The first is bursts of radiation from solar flares. The second is fast streams of plasma pushed toward Earth from the night side of the magnetosphere, the region of space shaped by Earth's magnetic field. Both projects combine large observational datasets with computer simulations to explain these responses and, eventually, to predict them.
Why it matters
Solar flares and other space-weather events can disrupt aviation, maritime and military radio communication and degrade global satellite navigation, which everyday life and national security depend on. By explaining why ionospheric responses differ from flare to flare, and by building machine learning tools to predict changes in total electron content, this work could improve space-weather forecasts and help operators reduce these disruptions. Its findings on how energy bursts from the magnetosphere enter the upper atmosphere could also inform future forecasting models.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Shinichi Ohtani
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Earth & Environmental Science
Identify the internal and external conditions under which the dawnside wedge current system appears during geomagnetic storms, using SuperMAG-selected events and probability distributions of solar wind and magnetospheric parameters.
Yukitoshi Nishimura
Boston University, MA·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine how GPS position errors evolve during severe geomagnetic storms and how they relate to total electron content (TEC) structures in the ionosphere, using receiver data from the GAGE facility.
Joseph Baker
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Physics
Operate and maintain the U.S. northern-hemisphere SuperDARN high-frequency radars, which span high latitudes from Alaska to Iceland and middle latitudes from Oregon to Virginia, to map ionospheric plasma motion.
The school
University of Michigan: 124 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 963 research doctorates a year.
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