George Maeda
Editor of ISWI Newsletter

In this Issue:

1. Editorial
2. 3rd E. E. Balogun National Symposium & 2019 National Air Quality Workshop
3. Scostep Visiting Scholar (Svs)
4. The 70th International Astronautical Congress 2019
5. Post Doctoral Positions
6. Call For Manuscript Submission
7. New Data Sharing Initiative: Open access, curated data provides new resource at ICTP

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Editorial

Welcome to the Welcome to the 5th edition of the Space Weather Nigerian Communication Network: SW-NICONET Newsletter. A platform where all issues pertaining to Space weather and ionospheric research in Nigeria and UN-ISWI activities are made known to us. The objective of this initiative is to to build a stronger space weather and ionospheric research network in Nigeria.

It is also intended to keep us abreast of new developments and research progress in Nigeria. The platform will also continually feature experiences of senior and mid career researchers in the field of Ionospheric and space weather research from Nigeria. This would help young researchers in the field build their research directions. It will also help reduce research repetition but rather help build up on existing works. SW-NICONET is in collaboration with the International Geophysical Research Group /Europe-Africa (IGRGEA).

This month's edition features one of our very own, a seasoned mid-career Scientist, researcher and mentor.

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3rd E. E. Balogun National Symposium & 2019 National Air Quality Workshop 28th--30th August 2019, Bowen University Osun State

The Centre for Atmospheric Research presents the 3rd Annual Professor Ekundayo E. Balogun National Symposium on Atmospheric Research. This 3rd National Symposium, which is merged with the 2019 National Air Quality Workshop, is being hosted by the Bowen University, Iwo, Nigeria. This, following the success of the 2018 National Workshop on Air Quality, the Centre of Atmospheric Research hereby announces the 2019 edition of the National Workshop.

Again, this edition aims at consolidating and furthering on the goals of the 1st workshop: analyze the present air quality scenario in Nigeria; chart and implement a sustainable National Air Quality Observation Network; ensure sustainable research capacity in the field of air quality monitoring and health impact assessment; and develop an effective information flow between empirical results and the general populace. This one-day symposium shall feature presentation on the life and contributions of Professor Ekundayo E Balogun to atmospheric research. It has been confirmed that Professor Ekundayo E Balogun who is now an Emeritus Professor shall physically be in attendance at this august event.

We solicit for papers on air quality and environmental research. Short papers are also invited for presentation on atmospheric sciences in general, space science education, and other works that border on research of interest to Professor Ekundayo E. Balogun. Thereafter, the Centre for Atmospheric Research intend to produce a peer-reviewed publication in form of monograph which shall contain papers presented in this meeting.

Theme:
Air Quality Issues in National Planning: Assessing Present Status and Predicting Future Trends

Sub-Themes:

• General Atmospheric Research,
• Meteorology {General meteorology, micrometeorology, radio meteorology, etc}
• Field Measurements of Air Pollutants: Gases and Particulates
• Aerosols Trend Analysis.
• Air Quality Models/Prediction, Current trends in Air Quality Prediction
• Air Pollution Meteorology

Application/Abstract Submission: Participation shall be by invitation only to successful candidates. Deadline for application and submission of abstract is 11.59 pm local time on Monday, 19th August, 2019.

Registration for the Workshop:
There shall be no registration fee for the Workshop. Cheap and affordable lodging facilities are available within the vicinity of Bowen University.

Enquiries: Direct all enquiries to:
Email: balogun.symposium[at]carnasrda.com
Dr. J.A. Akinpelu: 07035704810

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SCOSTEP Visiting Scholar (SVS)

The SCOSTEP Visiting Scholar (SVS) program is a new capacity building activity of SCOSTEP. The SVS program complements the current scientific program, VarSITI and SCOSTEP’s public outreach activities.

Objective: The objective of the SVS program is to provide training to young scientists and graduate students from developing countries in well-established solar terrestrial physics laboratories and institutions, for periods of between one and three months. The aim is to fund four scholars each year, one related to each of the four SCOSTEP VarSITI themes http://www.varsiti.org/
The training will help the young scientists to advance their career in solar terrestrial physics using the technique/skill they learned during the training. SCOSTEP will provide the airfare, while it is expected that the hosting lab will provide the living expenses (accommodation, sustenance, ground transportation, visa fees and other incidentals). Trainees should have their own health insurance or arrange a provision with the host institution. The trainees will be selected on a competitive basis.

Frequency: At least four scholars each year.

Application Procedure: Please contact one of the SVS program hosts listed below or in the SCOSTEP website (as updated) and work out the details of the visit with the host. Once the applicant and the host agree on a visit, please prepare an application package including the following the details of the visit

1. work to be performed described in the form of a 2 page proposal;
2. applicant’s curriculum vitae,
3. dates of the visit and an estimate of the airfare in economy class;
4. letter from the applicant’s supervisor, and
5. a recommendation letter from the host scientist/institution indicating that the proposed work will be mutually beneficial.

Prepare a single pdf file of the above material and email it to:
Dr. Marianna G. Shepherd (mshepher[at]yorku.ca). The applicant will be informed within three months after the deadline of the application.

List of hosts: For more information on the list of hosts, please visit
https://scostep.apps01.yorku.ca/programs/scostep-visiting-scholar-svs/

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The 70th International Astronautical Congress 2019, 21-25 Oct 2019, Washington D.C., United States

The International Astronautical Federation (IAF) invites you to the 70th annual International Astronautical Congress (IAC). #IAC2019, hosted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics ? AIAA will take place in Washington D.C., United States from 21 ? 25 October 2019. An intense week during which all space players will gather to discuss the advancement and progress of space in its various features; in particular this year, the IAC will commemorate that “one giant leap for mankind”: the 50th anniversary of a feat once thought impossible: humans walking on the moon, and celebrate the international accomplishments and partnerships that have become the hallmarks of space exploration. IAC 2019 will involve everyone offering a rich programme of Plenaries, Highlight Lectures, Technical lectures as well as a Global Networking Forum and many social events abundant in networking opportunities.

For more information, please visit
http://www.iafastro.org/events/iac/iac-2019/?utm_source

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Post-Doc in Space Plasmas Physics / Data Analysis

The Laboratory of Plasma Physics (LPP) invites applications for a postdoctoral position in space plasma physics. In the framework of a research project on the coupling between the solar wind and the terrestrial magnetosphere, the research activity will focus on the impact of extreme solar events such as Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) on the plasmasheet which represents the main plasma reservoir inside the terrestrial magnetosphere and on its dynamics. This project involves the analysis of in-situ observations onboard satellite constellations such as Cluster, THEMIS, MMS inside the magnetosphere during periods of extreme events by comparison to quiet periods and models. A statistical approach will then be developed.

Application procedure: The applicant should have completed a PhD in Plasma Physics, Astrophysics,Physics or related fields and published scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. Experience in in-situ space data analysis, in python programming and/or in statistical analysis will be appreciated. A good knowledge of written and spoken scientific English is required, as well as a rigorous work and capabilities to work in a team. The Laboratory of Plasmas Physics (LPP) is a CNRS Joint Research Unit based at Ecole Polytechnique near Paris. The successful candidate will join the “Space Plasmas” team. This postdoctoral fellowship will be appointed for a maximum of two years and will be granted on the basis of past experience. The position will be open until it is filled for a start in fall 2019. Interested candidates are invited to send their application to dominique.fontaine ‘at’ lpp.polytechnique.fr including : a cover letter describing background, qualifications and experience relevant to the position; a full curriculum vitae (CV) detailing education, publications, research experiences, awards, etc; the contact information for 3professional references and recommendation letters.

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Call For Papers

Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics (JASTP)

You are hereby invited to submit papers to the Special Issue of Variability of the Sun and Its Terrestrial Impact (VarSITI) Completion Symposium 2019 in Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics (JASTP). The symposium was held on June 10-14, 2019 at Sofia, Bulgaria. Because this special issue is one of the summarizing activities of the 5-year VarSITI program (2014?2018), we also welcome submission of papers from those who made presentation at the SCOSTEP's STP-14 conference (July 9-13, 2018, Toronto, Canada), and also from scientists who did not join these two symposiums.

The VarSITI program (http://www.varsiti.org/) was the 5-year international program of SCOSTEP (Scientific Committee On Solar-TErrestrial Physics) in 2014-2018. VarSITI focused on the recent and expected future solar activity and its consequences for the Earth, for various time scales from the order of thousands years to milliseconds, and for various locations and their connections from the solar interior to the Earth’s atmosphere. Four Scientific Projects were carried out under the VarSITI program: (1) Solar Evolution and Extrema (SEE), (2) International Study of Earth-Affecting Solar Transients (ISEST/MiniMax24), (3) Specification and Prediction of the Coupled Inner-Magnetospheric Environment (SPeCIMEN), and (4) Role Of the Sun and the Middle atmosphere / thermosphere / ionosphere In Climate (ROSMIC). These four projects were carried out in collaboration with relevant satellite and ground-based missions as well as modeling efforts to facilitate the implementation of these projects. The special issue welcomes new and interdisciplinary scientific results related to this 5-year VarSITI program.

Instructions for submission:

1. The submission website is https://www.editorialmanager.com/JASTP/default.aspx
   (you must have EVISE account)
   1. Log in with EVISE account,
   2. choose Start New Submission.
2. During the submission process, author will be asked to choose an Article Type.
   Choose VSI: (VarSITI2019 and STP-14)

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NGS CALL FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION

The Journal of the Nigerian Geophysical Society (NGS) is accepting manuscripts for its 2019 Edition.

To make submissions, login at http://journal.niggs.org/ and kindly follow the journal template. Processing charges is five thousand naira (#5000).

Submission deadline is 30th September, 2019.

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New Data Sharing Initiative: Open Access, Curated Data Provides New Resource at ICTP

The ICTP is providing a new important tool: open access curated data, a resource for scientists in places without large computational capacities. With a new data sharing initiative.

This initiative was brought about by the realization of a lot of computational power that is needed for modelling, analysis, and calibration of data in many fields, especially in physics. Powerful computational infrastructures like research computing clusters or supercomputers are less accessible in developing countries, meaning much more time or money is required to process data. In addition to computational power, some types of software used to clean or calibrate data are proprietary and expensive. Sharing existing data could help remove some of these barriers to research, and some scientists try to make their data and model outputs available already. But with no curation or publicizing, it can be difficult to find or use the data.

In 2016, ICTP Sitz collaborated on a small project to share the output data from RegCM-ES, the coupled regional climate model developed at ICTP. The long-term goal of the data sharing initiative is to store and curate data from all sections of ICTP as open source and easily downloadable

“With all the insights I got from that experience, and coming from Argentina myself, a developing country, I started thinking about how to connect the needs of scientists who have lower computational resources with the powerful tools that can result from sharing resources,” says Sitz.

The pilot project of the ICTP data sharing initiative is driven by a team at that includes Sandro Radicella, head of ICTP's Telecommunications/ICT for Development Laboratory (T/ICT4D), his colleagues in the lab Marco Zennaro, Luigi Ciraolo, Yenca Migoya-Orue', and Katy Alazo-Cuartas, and Clement Onime from ICTP's Information and Communication Technology Section (ICTS). Radicella's network includes a group of scientists from several developing countries who frequently use total electron content (TEC) data to investigate the state of Earth's ionosphere, the ionized part of the upper atmosphere. TEC data helps scientists study, among other questions, how ionization from solar radiation affects radio wave travel through the atmosphere, which communication and positioning systems rely on.

These researchers were asked if the availability of calibrated TEC was important to them. After their very positive answers, the T/ICT4D will provide calibrated TEC data of the past twenty years from around the globe, through the data sharing initiative, plus the continuous flow of almost real time data. The whole dataset is calibrated using the same technique, making it easy to compare between locations and regions.

“It’s quite exciting, because it’s a grand solution,” says Babatunde Rabiu, a professor at the Centre for Atmospheric Research at Kogi State University in Anyigba, Nigeria, one of the beta version testers for the pilot project. “It’s a service that is revolutionizing the way we do our research. Bandwidth can be a problem, so gathering and downloading data and software, and then processing data, can sometimes take many days. Now with a click, what once took six months, you can now do in six minutes.”

That time is key for the research process. Sharon Aol, a PhD student at Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Mbarara, Uganda, knows what she’ll be doing with the time saved thanks to ICTP’s calibrated TEC data sharing. “If you are doing some long-term study, you need a lot of data, and it can take a few months to process that data. But if you can just click and get that data fully processed, you can spend more time reading papers and focusing on the analysis; to understand everything needs time. Research is all about finding out new things, not taking time to process data.”

“This new project is intended as a framework to help scientists, both local ICTP faculty and outside associated researchers, adopt recognized best practices and standards in data publishing,” says Sitz. The goal is for the data to all be FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. “Scientists typically want to share their data but don’t want to take the time to make it FAIR, which is like making a library without any indexing. Having the data searchable, publicized, usable on different platforms, all of these are important.”

These are important ways to make the data as usable as possible. Sripathi Samireddipalle, an ICTP Associate and professor at the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism in Mumbai, India, says he and his students will be able to tackle more research questions thanks to the ease of using the calibrated TEC data available from ICTP. “This data access means I’ll be able to investigate open questions related to many space weather problems, like solar flares and coronal mass effects.”

For a data repository to be usable, however, indexing is key. “This project is about curating the data,” says Sitz. “That includes offering tools for ease of use, making user guides, maintaining the datasets, and taking care of regular updates.” Climate science, Sitz‘s field, deals with big data on a regular basis: running global coupled climate models produces a huge amount of data that can be used for many different types of analysis. “The idea is that scientists can download only the data they really need for their research,” says Sitz. “If you’re studying malaria spread by looking at the health of a disease-carrying mosquito population, you may only need certain parameters like regional temperature and precipitation, not all the data that comes with a global climate model.”

The initiative was recently awarded a Research Data Alliance (https://www.rd-alliance.org/) grant, and with further support from ICTP, the feedback from the ionospheric scientists will shape future practices. With luck, the data sharing initiative will turn into a key resource ICTP can offer scientists in developing countries. “It will stimulate the interest of scientists and bring in students to this field,” says Jacob Adeniyi, a professor of physics at Landmark University in Omu-Aran, Nigeria, who will be testing and giving feedback on the pilot project. “It will make doing research a lot easier.”

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