Supercomputing powers for space weather models

Solar storms can create stunning auroras in the night sky but also pose serious threats to modern technology. Space Weather (SWE) events can significantly disrupt communications, power transmission, and navigation systems on Earth, as they did in May 2024.

While space weather hazards cannot be prevented, they can be mitigated. Our only defence is the continuous monitoring of solar activity and the provision of accurate, timely information to critical infrastructure operators.

In March 2025, the ESA Space HPC supercomputer was inaugurated at ESRIN in Italy. This state-of-the-art supercomputing platform is designed to meet the growing computational needs of the European space industry. Applied to space weather, it will help bridge the gap between the vast amount of diverse data required for space weather modelling and the timely issuance of bulletins and alarms when necessary.

“The computing power has always been a major bottleneck for our forecasting models, as we must process a highly intricate and intercorrelated set of data coming from multiple software sources, describing specific conditions in various regions of the solar system,” says Jorge Amaya, Space Weather Modelling Coordinator at ESA.

“ESA Space HPC will enable us to perform forecasts in minutes rather than hours. More than anything, it will demonstrate the operational use of space weather modelling services by allowing us to quickly produce models, analyses, and actionable data to end-users”.

The ESA Space Weather Office has collaborated with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to demonstrate the performance of our computer models.

At the service of the European space weather community

ESA Space HPC is designed to serve the entire ecosystem of the space industry, including for space weather applications. Access to the HPC system will be granted after evaluation of the expressed needs by industry and academia of our member states, on a case-by-case approach. Requests for access can already be submitted.

The European space weather community has already worked to interconnect their models. ESA Space HPC will enhance it. Developed by ESA in collaboration with multiple European partners, the Virtual Space Weather Modelling Centre - or VSWMC - links up together a plethora of models describing a broad range of physical mechanisms encountered in the space environment.

"Currently, the VSWMC sits at a supercomputer in Belgium. Soon, we will migrate it to ESA Space HPC, allowing us to run all computer models together on the same system to maximize their efficiency," says Jorge Amaya.

From hours to minutes

The Space HPC supercomputer will help to greatly improve our understanding of the science behind space weather events and create models for previously uncharted territories, such as:

• The structure of the solar interior.
• The events that lead to coronal mass ejections.
• The impact of space weather events on our planetary environment.

"ESA Space HPC will be a significant time-saver. For example, EUHFORIA, one of the models we frequently use to track solar ejections propagating in all directions of the solar system, can take up to 10 hours to generate results on a single computer. While we have managed to reduce this time to 30 minutes on a smaller prototype version of the supercomputer, we estimate that the same simulation in the Space HPC would take just one minute,” concludes Jorge Amaya.