Abstract
The main objective of the NASA-NSF SWQU “A New-generation Software to
Improve the Accuracy of Space Weather Predictions” effort is to develop
a data-driven time-dependent model of the solar corona and heliosphere.
This model will provide coronal and solar wind predictions and be made
available to the public. One key component of this model is the use of a
data-assimilation flux transport model to generate an ensemble of
synchronic radial magnetic field maps to use as boundary conditions for
the coronal field model. While flux transport models have long been
established in the community, they are not open source or available for
public use. We therefore are developing a new Open-source Flux Transport
(OFT) software suite. The computational core of the OFT is the
High-Performance Flux Transport code (HipFT). HipFT implements
advection, diffusion, and data assimilation for the solar surface on a
logically rectangular non-uniform spherical grid. It is written in
Fortran and parallelized for use with multi-core CPUs and GPUs using a
combination of OpenACC/MP directives and Fortran’s standard parallel ‘do
concurrent’. To alleviate the strict time-step stability criteria for
the diffusion equation, we use a Legendre polynomial extended stability
Runge-Kutta super time-stepping algorithm (RKL2). The code is designed
to be modular, incorporating various differential rotation, meridianal
flow, super granular convective flow, and data assimilation models.
Multiple realizations of the evolving flux will be computed in parallel
using MPI in order to produce an ensemble of model outputs for
uncertainty quantification. Here, we describe the initial implementation
of the HipFT code and demonstrate its validation and performance. We use
an analytic solution of surface diffusion and rigid rotational
longitudinal velocity to validate the advection and diffusion
implementations. We also compare realistic flux transport test problems
against the established AFT flux transport code.