The RAS Specialist Discussion Meeting “Space weather and the solid Earth: the hazard to technology at the Earth’s surface” is to be held remotely on Friday 12 March 2021 from 10.30–15.30. It will be convened by Juliane Hübert, Gemma Richardson, Neil Rogers, and Alan Thomson. Abstracts can be submitted here and should be submitted by the end of Friday 22 January 2021. To register, visit the RAS website for the meeting (free for Fellows and £5 for non-Fellows). The meeting will be held on Zoom.
The technological impacts of space weather at ground level are the result of space physics processes driven by solar activity and by geophysical processes both external and internal to the solid Earth. Space weather causes geomagnetically induced currents that can damage power transformers and safety systems. It enhances voltage differences in metal gas transmission pipelines, which increases corrosion rates in pipe steel. Large surface electric fields during space weather may also trip rail circuits. To tackle questions such as where, how big and for how long do impacts last, requires a multi-disciplinary approach. The NERC ‘Space Weather Impacts on Ground-based Systems’ (SWIGS) project therefore brought together a broad spectrum of scientific expertise to answer such questions. SWIGS reaches its end in 2021 and this discussion meeting is intended for the scientific community to take stock of what we have learned about space weather and its impacts at ground level, in the last few years, as well as to discuss the scientific and operational breakthroughs that are still required. Given recent UKRI support for development of operational space weather services in the UK, the timing of this meeting seems particularly appropriate, as we look to a next generation of space weather models and applications.
The RAS Specialist Discussion Meeting “Comparative equatorial Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Magnetosphere coupling” is to be held remotely on Friday 12 February 2021 from 10.30–15.30. It will be convened by Tom Stallard, Greg Hunt, and Beatriz Sanchez-Cano. Abstracts can be submitted here and should be submitted by the end of Tuesday 12 January 2021. To register, visit the RAS website for the meeting (free for Fellows and £5 for non-Fellows). The meeting will be held on Zoom and Gather.town.
The main goal of this meeting is to bring a bridge between different planetary communities that would help to understand how equatorial magnetic fields link the atmosphere with the surrounding space environment across a range of planetary bodies, providing us with a comparative view of how these regions interact, the currents, and dynamics that these interactions produce; click through to read the abstract.
The meeting will take place via Zoom and Gathertown on Friday 08 January 2021. The programme, including Gathertown links, can be downloaded here. The abstract book can be downloaded here.
Registration is now open, with a deadline of midnight Thursday 07 January 2021. Registration links and details are available on the meeting website here: https://ras.ac.uk/events-and-meetings/ras-meetings/space-weather-energy-pathways-and-implications-impacts.
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A school dedicated to Solar Orbiter is to be held at the Ecole de Physique des Houches, 6–9 April 2021.
The exploitation of the ESA Solar Orbiter mission will shape the activity of the international heliophysics community for the years to come. Its success will depend on our ability to combine in situ and remote sensing data. This school held in the French Alps, will provide training to young scientists in using the extremely various datasets and the tools specifically developed to analyze them. It targets an international audience primarily composed of PhD students and junior postdoctoral researchers.
It will provide short presentations of the mission instruments and first results, hands-on activities for data analyses, as well as sessions for presentation by students. The school is organised by the French community, but is open to everyone.
While we are still facing an on-going worldwide pandemic, the conference center may open but only to a very limited amount of participants. Furthermore, different situations from different locations in the world may mean that international travels will not be possible at the time the school will be held. Therefore, we will provide a live access to the online lectures/hands-on sessions/presentations as well. We will need interested participants (for both on-site and remote participants) to register online, to assess the interest in the community (note that registration for remote participation will be capped to allow proper online interactions).
While we monitor the situation, the current calendar is as follows: pre-registrations will open on 15 December 2020 on the school website and will close on 31 January 2021. Applicants will be notified in early March 2021 at the latest.
For more information about the program and updates visit the school website.
The science teams of GOLD, ICON, and COSMIC, in conjunction with ground-based observers, will hold a workshop entitled Geospace discovery science in a new decade (GDS workshop) on 8–10 February 2021. Each day will comprise two separate sessions, each of which will last two hours, for a total of twelve hours of content. This is a follow-up to a meeting from 2016, and the summary text is below.
Three new space missions, COSMIC-2, GOLD and ICON, provide remarkable avenues for new investigations of the geospace system, in collaboration with a growing network of ground-based observatories and their associated research teams. With a broad slate of new capabilities, the geospace research community is presented with unprecedented opportunities for new research and a revitalised capacity for solving significant outstanding problems in near-Earth space weather. The two NASA missions, ICON and GOLD, observe the thermosphere and ionosphere using optical and in-situ instruments. The international COSMIC-2 mission comprises a constellation of six satellites that map the ionosphere using GPS radio occultation, in-situ measurements, and beacon signals for space to ground measurements. Enhanced ground-based observatories, cubesats, and other satellite constellations, also provide essential new measurements. Combining these tools to effectively address questions in ion-neutral coupling and upper-atmosphere dynamics requires a comprehensive scientific strategy for broad community participation. Therefore we are holding an online workshop from the 8-10 February 2021. This workshop will discuss the space-based missions, and complementary ground-based observations, modelling, and data synthesis.