Letters of Intent received in 2015

LoI 2017-275
Space Weather of the Heliosphere: Processes and Forecast

Topics

- Impact of solar wind, structures and radiation on and within terrestrial and planetary environments (including magnetospheres, ionospheres and atmospheres);
- Solar drivers of Space Weather: origin, onset, activity levels, e.g. How to anticipate flares and super flares;
- How to predict the propagation and evolution of solar disturbances;
- Long-term trends and predictions, e.g. How to predict the next solar cycles, planetary magnetic field, effects of solar variability on planetary climate;
- Challenges for Earth and the interplanetary medium: variability, extremes and boundary conditions of the space environments, characterisation, requirements, and terminology issues;
- Forecast Models: synergies in numerical simulations, advances in numerical approaches, computation, mathematics and physical processes, high-performance computing including need for visualisation;
- Data Handling and Assimilation: data format for scientific usage and real-time data assimilation within models and forecast; data dissemination: best practices; big data analyses vulnerability, statistical analysis, tools and ensemble models;
- Future Missions and Instrumentation: requirements from each community, potential coordination of space and ground-based instruments;
- Relationships with the ‘civil’ society: Societal needs, Predictability requirements, Disaster and Risk Reduction Concepts, Communication towards deciders; how to educate people without threat.

Rationale

The aim of a multi-disciplinary IAU Symposium on “Space Weather of the Heliosphere: Processes and Forecast” is to further knowledge on space weather by linking various aspects of research in Heliospheric physics. As illustrated by the recent (June 2015) endorsement of space weather activities by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), this is a timely subject linked to our modern society’s technological and economical developments. Moreover, recent efforts to send manned missions in the interplanetary space are putting increasing demands for space weather predictability beyond our Earth’s environment. The effects of interplanetary space weather, essentially on planets or moons from our Solar System, but also the space weather experienced by comets and asteroids, are enriching and stretching our understandings. Our scientific community has the responsibility to use its knowledge to support tackling societal problems; one of the roles that the community can play is to identify the research questions that have to be answered in order to improve forecast. The IAU Symposium will differ from other meetings on space weather by putting greater emphasises on cross-disciplinary developments, merging different communities, learning from interplanetary comparisons and linking to atmospheric and meteorological research for the first time at the international level. In particular the experience of the atmosphere and meteorological researchers can benefit to the Space Weather and Planetary communities to make the models accessible to operative services and research.

IAU members and scientists from solar, heliophysics and planetary communities across the world will be invited to meet with the Earth’s atmospheric science community, to share and discuss similar or common environmental challenges, to compare approaches, to help define requirements and to interact with common industrial or civil/corporate stakeholders. The Symposium will cover a broad range of topics within a 5-day program (including half-day excursion).

The University of Exeter, UK, proposes the venue for this Symposium. The University has both a strong tradition in weather research, recent growth in space weather areas, together with strong connections to the nearby UK Meteorological Office (all in Exeter).

We are a working group formed essentially of members from the IAU Division E Sun and Heliosphere, in the process of forming a broad consortium. The SOC of the symposium will be composed of representatives of the different communities including from the Interprogramme Coordination Team on Space Weather (ICTSW) and will respect the gender rules as well as regional diversity of IAU.