Table of Contents
- Magnetosphere Online Seminar Series
- 4th SWMF Users Meeting: November 4–6, 2020
- Summer 2020 VGEM Workshop Report: Dayside Kinetic Processes in Global Solar Wind-Magnetosphere Interaction Focus Group
- Summer 2020 VGEM Workshop Report: Particle Heating and Thermalization in Collisionless Shocks in the MMS Era Focus Group
- JOB OPENING: Research Fellowships in Space Sciences & Exploration
- JOB OPENING: Research Associate (Postdoc) in Scientific Programming
- FUTURE JOB OPENING: Upcoming Heliophysics Research Positions at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
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1. Magnetosphere Online Seminar Series
From: Kyle Murphy, David Sibeck (magnetosphere.seminars at gmail.com)
You are invited to join the Magnetosphere Online Seminar Series every Monday at 12 pm (EDST, 1600 UT).
On Monday October 5, Angeline Burrell will discuss Python in Space Physics at 12 PM EDST. A link to join the seminar via Zoom or YouTube can be found on our home page (https://msolss.github.io/MagSeminars/). The password to join the Zoom seminar is Mag@1.
There will be no seminar on Monday October 12.
You can see previous talks here - https://msolss.github.io/MagSeminars/blog.html
And add your name to the mailing list here - https://msolss.github.io/MagSeminars/mail-list.html
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2. 4th SWMF Users Meeting: November 4–6, 2020
From: Tamas Gombosi, Tuija Pulkkinen, Aaron Ridley, Gabor Toth, Shasha Zou (tamas at umich.edu)
A lot is happening at the University of Michigan in the space weather modeling area. We are well into the first year of our Phase-I NASA Heliophysics DRIVE Science Center (SOLSTICE) and are just starting two major SWQU (Next Generation Software for Data-driven Models of Space Weather with Quantified Uncertainties) projects: NextGen SWMF (funded by NSF) and Aether (funded by NASA). These synergistic efforts are aimed to bring SWMF to the next level by integrating cutting edge machine learning, data assimilation, uncertainty quantification and GPU computing with our world-class physics-based Space Weather Modeling Framework.
In order to engage the SWMF users and the broader SPA community in these activities, we will organize the 4th SWMF Users Meeting to update the Heliophysics community focusing on the latest results and plans. The meeting will take place November 4 - 6, 2020, over Zoom. The meeting will feature new modeling capabilities, science highlights, user experiences and agency perspectives.
The meeting will start Wednesday at 12:30pm (EST) and run through Friday afternoon at 5:30pm (EST). Each day we will have three 90 min long blocks separated by 15 min breaks (12:30-2:00, 2:15-3:45; 4:00-5:30).
The SWMF Users Meeting will include keynote presentations by the Michigan team as well as presentations by the broader SWMF community. The meeting is open to all interested colleagues and students, no presentation is required. If you want to give a science, development, or use-case presentation during the meeting please send a title by email to Tamas Gombosi (tamas at umich.edu) and Debbie Eddy (dkeddy at umich.edu).
A more detailed agenda will be announced as the meeting approaches. The final agenda will be composed of the invited and contributed talks selected based on relevance and available time.
The meeting will be in Zoom Webinar format. Please register in advance at
https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_0JFK86-MQv-zRw6fzOiFlA
After registration you will get a participant link that is unique to you.
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3. Summer 2020 VGEM Workshop Report: Dayside Kinetic Processes in Global Solar Wind-Magnetosphere Interaction Focus Group
From: Heli Hietala, Xochitl Blanco-Cano, Gabor Toth, Andrew Dimmock, and Ying Zou (heli at igpp.ucla.edu)
The Dayside Kinetic Processes in Global Solar Wind-Magnetosphere Interaction focus group held two concurrent sessions on Thursday between 1:00 pm-2:30 pm and 3:00 pm-4:30 pm ET. The sessions were well attended with a peak audience of 82 participants. Discussions took place both during the Zoom sessions and over the Slack channel.
Session 1: Thursday Concurrent Session 1 1:00pm-2:30pm ET
Andrew Dimmock (IRF, Uppsala) began the meeting with a welcome and a few updates on the focus group activities. The first was to inform everyone that the focus group period has been extended by 1 year, and the final focus group meetings are planned for the in-person summer GEM workshop in Hawaii, 2021. Secondly, details from our GEM challenge special issue in ESS-JGR were provided which contains publications of our challenge activities over the duration of the focus group.
Daniel Graham (IRF Uppsala, Sweden) provided an overview of the MMS science being conducted by the IRF Uppsala team. A wide variety of topics were discussed such as magnetic reconnection, whistler generation at quasi-perpendicular shocks, bow shock ion reflection, and electrostatic waves at the magnetopause.
Chih-ping Wang (UCLA, USA) presented a THEMIS-DMSP conjunction event to show magnetospheric processes responsible for the variations of soft electron precipitation. As shown by the three THEMIS probes, the large precipitation variations observed by DMSP were contributed by strong spatial and temporal variations in the plasma sheet cold electron fluxes, waves of three different modes (kinetic Alfven waves, ECH, and chorus waves), and upward field-aligned currents.
Brian Walsh (Boston University, USA) discussed the upcoming LEXI mission designed to place an X-ray telescope on the lunar surface to generate images of the dayside magnetopause. The project is part of the NASA Lunar Surface and Technology Payloads (LSITP) program and is scheduled for lunar deployment in 2022
Hyunju Connor (University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA) estimated neutral densities near the subsolar magnetopause using XMM-Newton X-ray observations and OpenGGCM global MHD model. The estimated neutral densities are higher during solar minimum than solar maximum, suggesting that photoionization plays an important role in this outer exosphere region.
Martin Archer (Queen Mary University of London, UK) discussed parameterizing the steepening of foreshock ULF waves into shocklets and SLAMS. He introduced an independent and dimensionless quantitative measure of wave steepening based on the tail weight of dB/dt, showing this well orders the phenomena and correlates highly to ΔB/B allowing future quantitative comparisons of steepening under different upstream conditions and at different environments across the solar system.
Yuxi Chen (University of Michigan, USA) presented the MHD-EPIC simulation results of the southward IMF challenge event, compared the simulation magnetic field and plasma properties with the MMS observations, and studied the evolution of the X-lines at the magnetopause.
Session 2: Thursday Concurrent Session 1 3:00pm-4:30pm ET
Hyomin Kim (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA) presented ionospheric signatures at interhemispheric conjugate locations in response to hot flow anomalies (HFAs) observed by the MMS spacecraft near the bow shock. A series of HFA events occurred for less than an hour, of which the ground responses were shown as travelling convection vortices (TCV), EMIC waves, and ionospheric convection flow changes/enhancements with approximately 8 min delays. Solar wind and geomagnetic activities did not appear to provide favorable conditions for such dynamic signatures on the ground.
Terry Liu (UCLA, USA) presented case studies that show that magnetosheath jet-driven bow waves can accelerate ions and electrons. From a statistical study, they showed that large solar wind dynamic pressure, large plasma beta (low magnetic pressure), and large Alfven Mach number favour the formation of jet-driven bow waves. They also showed that it is common for them to accelerate particles indicating their potential contribution to the particle acceleration at the parent shock.
David Sibeck (NASA/GSFC, USA) presented observations from a time interval when the THEMIS spacecraft straddled the post-noon bow shock. The observations confirm the direct transmission of correlated foreshock cavity density and magnetic field strength variations into the magnetosheath.
Sun-Hee Lee (NASA/GSFC, USA) used Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft observations to identify 23 FBs from September 2015 to January 2020. Ion intensities at energies for 5.2 to 37.4 keV are generally greater during than before or after the events, suggesting that FBs can accelerate particles to these energies.
Ahmad Lalti (IRF Uppsala, Sweden) presented MMS observations of whistler waves upstream of quasi-perpendicular bow shocks. They analysed 11 quasi-perpendicular shock crossings, all of which having a precursor wave train upstream. They characterize the precursor waves, identifying them as the whistlers mode. Then they analyze the velocity distribution function, exploring the resonance condition, and use a kinetic dispersion solver to better understand the mechanism of the generation of such waves.
Adam Michael (Applied Physics Laboratory, USA) discussed MMS observations of periodic low-frequency waves at the dawn-flank, high-latitude boundary layer on February 25, 2016, likely generated by the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. With the global MHD magnetosphere model, GAMERA, a reinvention of the high-heritage LFM code, they show that despite the pristine slow wind impacting the magnetosphere, the high-latitude boundary layer is unstable to KHI. The waves within the global MHD model are consistent with MMS observations and occur where the IMF direction causes the draped field to be perpendicular to the flow velocity.
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4. Summer 2020 VGEM Workshop Report: Particle Heating and Thermalization in Collisionless Shocks in the MMS Era Focus Group
From: Lynn Wilson III, Li-Jen Chen, Katherine Goodrich, and Ivan Vasko (lynn.b.wilsoniii at gmail.com)
Session 1:
Attendance: ~30+ people
Lynn Wilson: Gave a talk on the partition of energy at interplanetary shocks. The main conclusion is that electrons contribute significantly to the energy budget of low Mach number (Mf < 6) collisionless shock waves.
Terry Liu: Gave a talk on magnetic reconnection in foreshock transients showing that reconnection aided/affected the particle energization in these environments.
Vadim Roytershteyn: Gave a talk on high resolution PIC simulations showing that PIC simulations consistently underestimate the amplitude of high frequency electrostatic waves while overestimating the amplitude of quasi-static electric fields. These results are critically important to understanding particle dynamics in collisionless shocks.
Hadi Madanian: Gave a talk on the modulation of high Mach number shocks by reflected ions. The basic idea is that ion reflection induces nonstationarity rather than maintaining a stationary discontinuity in high Mach number shocks.
Ivan Vasko: Gave a talk on electrostatic solitary waves and their origin in collisionless shock waves. The work illustrates that not only are these waves not consistent with previous assumptions (i.e., they are not electron phase space holes), they likely arise indirectly from an ion/ion two stream instability.
Mike Liemohn: Provided a brief advertisement for his GEM modeling and resource group.
Session 2:
Attendance: ~30+ people
Drew Turner: Gave a talk on MMS in situ observations of the formation of a collisionless shock. If correct, this would be the first time such a phenomena has been observed.
Naoki Bessho: Gave a talk on PIC simulations of magnetic reconnection occurring within a quasi-parallel collisionless shock. The idea is to test whether this phenomenon is present in the Earth's quasi-parallel bow shock. So far as they can tell, it does seem like reconnection plays an important role in the energy dissipation in quasi-parallel collisionless shocks.
Andrew Dimmock: Gave a quick presentation on the Solar Orbiter working group focusing on shock waves and particle energization.
Alexandra Brosius: Gave a talk on the importance of how one implements MVA on the quality of the output results. Her work shows that one needs to take great care to determine the proper time intervals and frequency filters; otherwise the results will not only be inaccurate, they can be completely misleading.
Colby Haggerty: Gave a talk on hybrid simulation work that shows really high Mach number shocks that generate cosmic rays actually start to modify the traditional Rankine-Hugoniot relations. That is, the density compression ratio can exceed 4 and the power law spectra of cosmic rays undergoing diffusive shock acceleration becomes steeper, not flatter.
Katy Goodrich: Gave an impromptu talk on some new Parker Solar Probe observations of the Cytherian bow shock. She is finding that there are more magnetic holes and double-layers within the shock than one finds at Earth, which is currently unexplained.
Session Style:
An informal virtual session? People were free to ask questions as they pleased and all talks generated some good discussion.
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5. JOB OPENING: Research Fellowships in Space Sciences & Exploration
From: Ana M. Heras (ana.heras at esa.int)
ESA‘s postdoctoral Research Fellowship programme offers young scientists and engineers the possibility to carry out research in a variety of disciplines related to space science, space applications or space technology. Research Fellowships in Space Science & Exploration specifically offer the opportunity to contribute to ESA‘s endeavour to explore our Solar System and the Universe in the fields of human and robotic exploration, heliophysics, planetary science, astrophysics and fundamental physics.
Research Fellows also help foster a lively scientific environment in the directorates, inspiring ESA scientists to get involved in new scientific activities. The Research Fellowship programme nurtures and strengthens the links between ESA and the scientific communities in the Member States.
Approximately 9 ESA Fellowships in Space Science and 9 in Human and Robotic Exploration will be offered this year, to join the pool of about 30 Research Fellows in the two Directorates (Science and Human and Robotic Exploration).
This year, the Directorate for Human and Robotic Exploration is interested in Research Fellows working on various specific projects with brief descriptions under: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/science-faculty/hre. These Fellowships are offered at ESTEC, EAC, or ECSAT.
Within the Directorate of Science, we are welcoming all proposals for innovative research associated with one or more of our missions. These Fellowships can be taken at any of the three sites: ESAC, ESTEC, or STScI. To learn more about the research conducted by the Directorate’s scientists, please visit the Science Faculty site: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/science-faculty/home
Duration: Appointments are initially for two years, with a third year extension frequently granted.
Eligibility: Only citizens of ESA Member States or countries associated with ESA are eligible.
More information on the Research Fellowship programme and on how to apply can be found at https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/science-faculty/research-fellowship.
Deadline for applications is 29 October 2020.
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6. JOB OPENING: Research Associate (Postdoc) in Scientific Programming
From: Melanie Burns, Yuri Shprits (melanie at gfz-potsdam.de)
GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences Potsdam, Germany - Section Magnetospheric Physics, working with Prof. Yuri Shprits
Deadline: 15 November 2020
The department of Geophysics at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences invites applications for a Research Associate (Postdoc) in Scientific Programming, in the section of Magnetospheric Physics.
Candidates for the Research Associate position ideally hold a PhD in computer sciences, physics, mathematics or a related field (Master’s qualified applicants with suitable experience may also be considered). The scope of this position includes the development of scientific codes, visualization and various programming tools for codes and data analysis, as well as testing and adopting scientific codes within the broader application of conducting space physics research. The work carried out will be performed in the context of the EU Horizon 2020-funded consortium PAGER, led by GFZ Potsdam. The primary aim of PAGER is to provide space weather predictions initiated from observations on the Sun and to predict radiation in space and its effects on satellite infrastructure.
Ideal candidates will have several years of experience working with IT programming or scientific programming, knowledge of Unix, Mac and windows operating systems as well as advanced knowledge of C++, Matlab, IDL, Python and Fortran programming languages. Experience developing numerical codes and maintaining Unix work stations are essential, as is the ability to work within a team, show attention to detail and possess superior organisational skills.
For more details, please see:
Research Associate position: https://gfz-potsdam.concludis.de/prj/shw/e8432fb72c61c9066957124e5a420a05_0/4358/Research_Associate_m_f_x_Scientific_Programming.htm?lang=en_GB
For questions please contact Prof. Yuri Shprits: yshprits at gfz-potsdam.de
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7. FUTURE JOB OPENING: Upcoming Heliophysics Research Positions at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
From: David McKenzie (david.e.mckenzie at nasa.gov)
The Heliophysics & Planetary Science Branch at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, plans to offer multiple positions seeking scientists focused on conducting research and developing applications solving challenging Heliophysics problems. Outstanding candidates have the potential to be selected for federal employment, joining more than 30 other federal employees, academic staff, and contractors supporting solar physics and space weather science efforts within the Branch, a subset of the Science Research and Projects Division, and the Science and Technology Office at Marshall Space Flight Center.
Research Astrophysicist positions will be considered to support the following focus areas:
* Solar/Heliospheric remote sensing, research, and analysis: Complete novel research activities for MSFC through independent reviews and interpretation of research data in related research areas concerned with the Sun, solar activity, or Space Weather
* Development of solar physics instrumentation: Serve as an instrument scientist in suborbital or orbital space missions with responsibility for working with multidisciplinary teams of engineers and scientists
The selected candidates will have opportunities to lead the development of research proposals for new activities, execute funded projects, and share their accomplishments through conference participation and appropriate peer-reviewed literature.
The positions are expected to be announced in autumn 2020 under the category of Research Astrophysicist and at the GS-13 grade level. Successful candidates will have had experience applying advanced tools, techniques, and/or data analysis/mining/machine learning techniques to observational datasets collected with remote sensing measurement techniques. Candidates should have made regular contributions to a research team with some guidance and direction, developed new analysis techniques to solve challenging problems, made contributions to peer-reviewed proposals in response to technical solicitations, and have contributed to peer-reviewed publications as part of a demonstrated publication record.
The formal announcement of the opportunity and related requirements will be posted in the near future at USAJobs (www.usajobs.gov) and can be found by searching with keyword NASA and location of Huntsville, Alabama. Applications are only accepted through the USAJobs portal, and United States citizenship is required to be eligible for these civil service positions. Candidates are encouraged to create a USAJobs profile well in advance to populate their resume and may also subscribe to USAJobs alerts received via email. Informal inquiries can be directed to Dr. David McKenzie, david.e.mckenzie at nasa.gov, 256-961-7896.
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