Challenges using gprMax for space weather research
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Juan Carlos Araujo Cabarcas
Aug 19, 2025, 10:48:43 AMAug 19
to gprMax-users
Dear developer and support team,
First of all, thank you for the development and maintenance of the gprMax software.
We are thrilled from it's simplicity, capabilities and great performance.
We are a team of researchers in Space Physics at Umeå University interested in using gprMax for assessing various space weather effects (solar-terrestrial interaction) in combination with cutting-edge measuring systems and modelling.
In order to carry on with our research, we are evaluating gprMax as a simulation environment for the evolution of Maxwell equations in time domain.
Particularly, our computational domain is a section of Europe (Fennoscandia) with depth of 60 km, and highest altitude of 150 km, plus PML domain and we aim at a resolution of ds~ 5 km (dx,dy,dz). We are happy with the current state of gprMax in the first stage of our study and we have set up a modeling framework following this forum and your guidelines. However, for future evaluations we have found some challenges with gprMax and we would like to ask for your advise:
1) Our first challenge is the modeling of the continuous conductivity of the soil. We are aware of the "bin" method for discretizing the conductivity profile, but it would be convenient to design other alternatives to make use of our current high resolution conductivity map into the simulation.
2) For modeling ionospheric currents (sources), we have utilized a sequence of "Hertian dipoles" on a plane (thin layer) around 100 km altitude and for our first test we use the same polarization and time profile for all of them. However, soon we would need to implement a more realistic case where currents have both: space and time functions and we would need to input values per discretization cell/edge. For example, take a look into EICs by FMI: https://space.fmi.fi/MIRACLE/iono_2D.php#html
First of all, thank you for the development and maintenance of the gprMax software.
We are thrilled from it's simplicity, capabilities and great performance.
We are a team of researchers in Space Physics at Umeå University interested in using gprMax for assessing various space weather effects (solar-terrestrial interaction) in combination with cutting-edge measuring systems and modelling.
In order to carry on with our research, we are evaluating gprMax as a simulation environment for the evolution of Maxwell equations in time domain.
Particularly, our computational domain is a section of Europe (Fennoscandia) with depth of 60 km, and highest altitude of 150 km, plus PML domain and we aim at a resolution of ds~ 5 km (dx,dy,dz). We are happy with the current state of gprMax in the first stage of our study and we have set up a modeling framework following this forum and your guidelines. However, for future evaluations we have found some challenges with gprMax and we would like to ask for your advise:
1) Our first challenge is the modeling of the continuous conductivity of the soil. We are aware of the "bin" method for discretizing the conductivity profile, but it would be convenient to design other alternatives to make use of our current high resolution conductivity map into the simulation.
2) For modeling ionospheric currents (sources), we have utilized a sequence of "Hertian dipoles" on a plane (thin layer) around 100 km altitude and for our first test we use the same polarization and time profile for all of them. However, soon we would need to implement a more realistic case where currents have both: space and time functions and we would need to input values per discretization cell/edge. For example, take a look into EICs by FMI: https://space.fmi.fi/MIRACLE/iono_2D.php#html
We look forward to your kind advise and getting hands on into space weather research using gprMax.
Kind regards,
Juan Araújo, PhD
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