  Recent observations at high spatial resolution have shown that magnetic flux
cancellation occurs on the solar surface much more frequently than previously
thought, and so this led Priest et al 2018 to propose magnetic reconnection
driven by photospheric flux cancellation as a mechanism for chromospheric and
coronal heating. In particular, they estimated analytically the amount of
energy released as heat and the height of the energy release during flux
cancellation. In the present work, we take the next step in the theory by
setting up a two-dimensional resistive MHD simulation of two canceling
polarities in the presence of a horizontal external field and a stratified
atmosphere in order to check and improve upon the analytical estimates.
Computational evaluation of the energy release during reconnection is found to
be in good qualitative agreement with the analytical estimates. In addition, we
go further and undertake an initial study of the atmospheric response to
reconnection. We find that, during the cancellation, either hot ejections or
cool ones or a combination of both hot and cool ejections can be formed,
depending on the height of the reconnection location. The hot structures can
have the density and temperature of coronal loops, while the cooler structures
are suggestive of surges and large spicules.
