CHARGED: Understanding the Physics of Extreme Geomagnetically Induced Currents

The Comprehensive Hazard Analysis for Resilience to Geomagnetic Extreme Disturbances (CHARGED) project will develop, validate, and apply a state-of-the-art numerical model for studying and predicting Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GICs). GICs are driven by the induced geoelectric field, which is the result of solar storms interacting with the Earth's magnetic field, and an extreme GIC event could leave the United States without electricity for a month or more and cost trillions of dollars to fully recover. Studying and predicting these events is difficult because it requires a multidisciplinary approach that includes magnetospheric physics, ionospheric and atmospheric physics, and physics of the solid Earth. The CHARGED project includes first-principles modeling of every step of this interconnected system to create the world's first solar wind-to-lithosphere numerical model of the geoelectric field. This report will update the community on progress so far, which has focused on model upgrades, code coupling, and data-model comparisons for validation. Simulations of idealized-input extreme events are planned for the near future.