Tornado like plasma motions have been reported to abundantly exist in the chromospheric layers of quiet Sun regions by various solar observers in the recent past. They are considered a viable candidate mechanism for the heating of the outer solar atmosphere. However, their true nature and origin and their effective role in the transport of energy, waves, and mass are still unclear. A team of scientists, mainly based at the Leibniz Institute for Solar Physics (KIS) and the Istituto Ricerche Solari Locarno (IRSOL), have now studied the origin and evolution of chromospheric swirls in numerical simulations of the quiet solar atmosphere.

The Solar Physics Division (SPD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) has awarded the 2021 Karen Harvey Prize for significant contributions to the study of the Sun early in a person's professional career to Dr. Lucia Kleint, who until very recently was leading the GREGOR telescope and the Tenerife Observatory group at KIS.