ISWI Newsletter - Vol.13 No.02
26 February 2021

Dear ISWI Participant:

As editor of this newsletter, and as a participant of the "19 Feb 2021 Virtual Edition of the ISWI Steering Committee Meeting" organized by UNOOSA, I wish to say that it was a fantastic success (despite its length of five hours). Sharafat Gadimova and Patrick Gindler had organized this online meeting superbly as they always do in the case of in-person meetings.

However, that length is a testament to the amount of ISWI material that had to be covered since the previous meeting in February of 2020. Unlike a normal face-to-face steering committee meeting in Vienna, the benefit of doing it online is that broader participation was enabled (especially national coordinators and instrument leads). Upwards of fifty persons from all over the globe attended this meeting. Excellent information exchange and productive discussions occurred during these five hours of a Friday night (in Japan).

The meeting was chaired by Nat Gopalswamy (Executive Director of ISWI). Pat Doherty (Workshop coordinator of ISWI) controlled the flow of information. Christine Amory (Chair, Membership subcommittee) chaired the session on presentations by ISWI National Coordinators, while Shing Fung (Chair, data subcommittee) chaired the session covering ISWI instrument arrays and data policy. Many nations contributed "update reports" on national space weather activities covering research, education, outreach, and policy.

Other outstanding presentations during this meeting were:
- AI/Machine Learning for Space Weather (Lika Guhathakurta)
- SCOSTEP/PRESTO Report (Kazuo Shiokawa)
- ISWI/India Workshop Status (Tarun Pant, Pat Doherty and Sharafat Gadimova)
- Iberian ISWI School 2021 Online (Teresa Barata)
- Data Subcommittee Report (Shing Fung)
- ISWI/NASA Report (Jim Spann)
- ISWI/UNOOSA Collaboration (Sharafat Gadimova)
- Expert Committee on Space Weather (Ian Mann)
- VarSITI Report (Katya Georgieva)

It was great to see a lot of synergy with SCOSTEP and COSPAR in organizing capacity building workshops and international space science schools.

The meeting was concluded (after midnight in Japan) with some general discussion. Nat pointed out some deficits: report from regional coordinators; NOAA and ISES updates; ISWI participation in space weather services after discussing with the relevant organizations.

In the opening Secretariat Report, Katya presented a report about the ISWI Website.
I presented a report about the ISWI Newsletter.

During this steering committee meeting, it was decided that starting with next issue of the ISWI Newsletter it will be released on a fixed date: The 15th of each month. (Until now it had been variable.) This provides material contributors with a fixed target each month; I need your material by the 10th of each month. (Do not give me event deadlines that fall before the release date ! )

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

[1] Presentations of 19 Feb 2021 ISWI Steering Committee Meeting (read it)

[2] IGRGEA LETTER, No. 64 (read it)

[3] Data from Two ISWI Instruments (AWESOME and eCallisto) are now Accessible from NASA Data Services (read it)

[4] ISWI Data Subcommittee Report, 19 Feb 2021 (read it)

[5] The first issue of the ISWI Newsletter (in 2009) (see it)

[6] SCOSTEP/PRESTO Grants for Year 2021 (read it)

[7] Welcome to Space Environment Program, M.Sc. and Ph.D Programs at E-JUST in Egypt (read it)

[8] Space Weather Nigerian Communication Network Newsletter (SwNICONET) Vol. 3, Iss 01, Jan, 2021 (read it)

[1] Presentations of 19 Feb 2021 ISWI Steering Committee Meeting

Please note that the presentations made at the ISWI Steering Committee, 19 February 2021, are now available at: this place

Direct link to the 2021 presentations: click here

Submitted by Patrick Gindler
United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) Vienna, Austria

[2] IGRGEA LETTER, No. 64

See: PDF

Submitted by Chr. Amory-Mazaudier

[3] Data from Two ISWI Instruments (AWESOME and eCallisto) are now Accessible from NASA Data Services

A key to increase utilization of ISWI instrument data is to make them more accessible and usable by the wider heliophysics and space weather research community.

To that end, the data from two ISWI instruments, AWESOME and eCallisto (see Projects under http://www.iswi-secretariat.org/), are now accessible and searchable from the NASA Heliophysics Data Portal (https://heliophysicsdata.gsfc.nasa.gov) and the Virtual Wave Observatory (https://vwo.nasa.gov/).

The essential underpinning that enabled the registration of the datasets, making them available from the NASA data services, is the description of metadata using the SPASE metadata model (https://spase-group.org/).

Submitted by Shing Fung

[4] ISWI Data Subcommittee Report

Chair: Shing F. Fung, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, USA

Members:
-Christine Amory, LPP UPMC Polytechnique, CNRS, France
-Jesper Gjerloev, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, USA
-Keith Groves, Boston College, USA
-George Maeda, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan
-Christian Monstein, Istituto Ricerche Solari Locarno (IRSOL), Switzerland
-Terry Onsager, NOAA SWPC, USA
-Babatunde Rabiu, NASRDA, Nigeria

See the reduced version:  872KB, 11 pages

Submitted by Shing F. Fung

[5] The first issue of the ISWI Newsletter (in 2009)

See this:  503KB, six pages

Submitted by G. Maeda

[6] SCOSTEP/PRESTO Grants for Year 2021

-- Guidelines for Applications of Database Proposals --

SCOSTEP/PRESTO provides support for creating databases of solar-terrestrial data that are strictly related to one or more PRESTO Pillars and contribute to the PRESTO activities.

PRESTO funding for databases is typically up to 5000 US dollars.

The PRESTO grants can be used to cover, fully or partially, the following expenses:
-software;
-manpower;
-servers;
-web-site maintenance.

For details, see:  82KB, two pages

Submitted by G. Maeda

[7] Welcome to Space Environment Program, M.Sc. and Ph.D Programs in Egypt

Dear George,

Thank you for your kind effort. May I include the "Student Voice" of our African students who got MSc scholarships in our Space Environment Program. The materials are attached.

For details, see African students who got MSc  421KB, one page

Poster Space Environment Program  994KB, one page

Submitted by A. Mahrous

[8] Space Weather Nigerian Communication Network Newsletter … … …January 2021

CONTENTS

I. Editorial

II. New year Message

III. Space Weather Capacity Building Activities by the International Space Weather Initiative

IV. Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology TICAD7 African Scholarships - Space Environment

V. Space Tourism Society Africa

View this email in your browser

Submitted by Bola R. Abdulrahim
([email protected])

Attachments:

(1) IGRGEA LETTER N⁰64 NOVEMBER 2020  695KB, six pages

(2) ISWI Data Subcommittee Report 2021 reduced  872KB, 11 pages

(3) The first issue of the ISWI Newsletter (in 2009)  503KB, six pages

(4) SCOSTEP/PRESTO Grants for Year 2021  82KB, two pages

(5) African students who got MSc  421KB, one page

(6) Poster Space Environment Program  994KB, one page