Research projects

ReSoLVE (Research on SOlar Long-term Variability and Effects) is a Center of Excellence established in 2014 and funded by the Academy of Finland. We are a group of 5 research teams from University of Oulu and Aalto University focused on studying the long-term solar variability and its effects in near-Earth space, atmosphere and climate. The DYNAMO team led by Maarit Käpylä concentrates on studying the solar dynamo mechanism and the physical causes of long-term variations and irregular behavior in solar magnetic activity. Homepage of the astroinformatics group in Aalto University, Finland.

Aalto University - MPS - Nordita consortium of scientists, led by Petri Käpylä, was awarded with 20 million CPU hours of PRACE Tier-0 resources in Mare Nostrum. The computational project studies the fundamental physical processes leading to the formation of sun- and starspots in the turbulent convection zone. Such processes have previously been related to strong shear layers deep in the stellar interiors, in the transition region from rigidly rotating radiation zone into a turbulent differentially rotating convection zone. However, recent observations show that fully convective stars exhibit magnetic activity levels similar to stars with convective envolopes. This puts the prevailing scenario under serious doubt. Our computational project searches for alternative explanations arising from turbulent effects. [more]