Prof. Dr. Kiyohumi Yumoto Director Space Environment Research Center Kyushu University Hakozaki 6-10-1 Higashi-ku Fukuoka 812-8581 Japan

23 October 2009

International Space Weather Initiative Newsletter

The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS), in its fifty-second session in Vienna from 3 to 12 June 2009, noted the importance of continuing to build upon the successes of the International Heliophysical Year 2007 (IHY 2007), in particular by deepening the understanding of the function of the Sun and its effects on the Earth’s magnetosphere, environment and climate, and noted with satisfaction the agreement reached by the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee at its forty-sixth session to consider, beginning at its fortyseventh session in 2010, a new agenda item entitled “International Space Weather Initiative (ISWI)” under a three-year workplan (2010, 2011, 2012) with specific focus on the effects of space weather on the Earth.

ISWI will utilize the ground-based world-wide IHY instrument arrays under deployment since 2005. In this respect I am taking the opportunity to thank you, on behalf of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), for the outstanding success of MAGDAS implemented in your capacity as Principal Investigator of the MAGDAS/CPMN Project and Organizer of IHY for Japan.

International ISWI workshops have been tentatively scheduled to be hosted by Egypt (2010) for Western Asia, Nigeria (2011) for Africa, and Ecuador (2012) for Latin America and the Caribbean. The 2009 UN/ESA/NASA/JAXA Workshop on Basic Space Science and the International Heliophysical Year 2007, held in the Republic of Korea in 2009, started implementing the ISWI as put forth by UNCOPUOS.

One of the major elements of ISWI will be the publication of an ISWI Newsletter on a continuing basis in the period of time 2010-2012 to assure worldwide delivery of the results of ISWI and its instrument arrays. This will cover all 192 Member States of the United Nations. Following deliberations of UNCOPUOS and UN/ESA/NASA/JAXA workshops, I would like to request SERC of Kyushu University to publish the ISWI Newsletter, under your distinguished guidance. Distribution of the Newsletter will be accomplished by email and mail as might be appropriate. UNOOSA, through its mailing system, will support the distribution of the ISWI newsletter to UN Member States.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely, Hans J. Haubold United Nations Programme on Space Applications