ISWI Newsletter - Vol.6 No.048
15 December 2014
Dear ISWI Participant:
This newsletter warmly welcomes submission of material to share with the 476 subscribers of this newsletter -- now in its 5th year of publication. All 527 back issues of this newsletter are archived at the ISWI Website of http://www.iswi-secretariat.org/ (this site)
An especially important announcement in this issue is Item [5]. AGS (the "AGU" of Africa) is up and running. It had its maiden conference this year in Abuja and next year it will be in Nairobi. Space science conferences in Africa are very much in line with the objectives and aspirations of ISWI. Please support these conferences whenever you are able to.
Editor of ISWI Newsletter
CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE
[1] CALLISTO status report/newsletter #54 (read it)
[2] Recent honors and prizes won by scholars of CENTRE FOR MATHEMATICAL AND STATISTICAL SCIENCES (CMSS), Kerala, India (read it)
[3] Physicist presented new observational solar weather model at SCOSTEP's 13th Quadrennial Solar-Terrestrial Physics Symposium in Xian, China. (read it)
[4] Magnetohydrodynamic Simulation of a Sigmoid Eruption of Active Region 11283 (read it)
[5] Call for Participation: 2015 African Geophysical Society (AGS) Conference 1st‑5th June 2015, Nairobi, Kenya. (read it)
[6] SuperMAG news, November, 2014 (read it)
[1] CALLISTO status report/newsletter #54
1st light from Callisto in Karachi, Pakistan:
Recently a new Callisto solar radio spectrometer has been set into operation at the Space Weather Monitoring Division, Geomagnetic Research Group of the Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) in Karachi, Pakistan. The instrument is hosted and operated by Muneeza Muhammad Ali. First observations have been conducted and data will soon arrive at the archive of the e-Callisto archive. The situation regarding RFI is quite good, no strong transmitters which produce cross-modulation in the receiver.
For more details see the first attached file
(Sent in by C. Monstein)
[2] Recent honors and prizes won by scholars of CENTRE FOR MATHEMATICAL AND STATISTICAL SCIENCES (CMSS), Kerala, India
Please see see the second attached file
(Sent in by H. Haubold)
[3] PHYS.ORG: Physicist presents new observational solar weather model; 8 December 2014
Scientists now have an observational framework to help predict solar weather and how it will affect Earth.
"Now it's possible that we can have a space weather model that's like Earth's meteorology," says physicist Dr. S.T. Wu, distinguished professor emeritus of The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
That's thanks to the observation-based model that predicts the occurrence and timing of solar mass ejections recently presented by Dr. Wu at the Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics' (SCOSTEP's) 13th Quadrennial Solar-Terrestrial Physics Symposium in Xi'An, China.
Being able to predict such events is important because a powerful direct hit by a coronal mass ejection (CME) is like a huge space hurricane that can deform Earth's magnetic field and fry the circuits of orbiting satellites, spacecraft and delicate terrestrial electronics.
For the rest of this story see third attached file
(Sent in by H. Haubold)
[4] Chaowei Jiang, Xueshang Feng, S. T. Wu, and Qiang Hu Magnetohydrodynamic Simulation of a Sigmoid Eruption of Active Region 11283, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 771:L30 (5pp), doi:10.1088/2041-8205/771/2/L30
ABSTRACTCurrent magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the initiation of solar eruptions are still commonly carried out with idealized magnetic field models, whereas the realistic coronal field prior to eruptions can possibly be reconstructed from the observable photospheric field. Using a nonlinear force-free field extrapolation prior to a sigmoid eruption in AR 11283 as the initial condition in an MHD model, we successfully simulate the realistic initiation process of the eruption event, as is confirmed by a remarkable resemblance to the SDO/AIA observations.
Analysis of the pre-eruption field reveals that the envelope flux of the sigmoidal core contains a coronal null and furthermore the flux rope is prone to a torus instability. Observations suggest that reconnection at the null cuts overlying tethers and likely triggers the torus instability of the flux rope, which results in the eruption. This kind of simulation demonstrates the capability of modeling the realistic solar eruptions to provide the initiation process.
See fourth attached file
(Sent in by H. Haubold)
[5] 2015 African Geophysical Society Conference 1st‑5th June 2015, NAIROBI, Kenya
Call for Participation .The African Geophysical Society AGS is accepting application for her Second Annual Conference. It will take place at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, Nairobi, Kenya.
See fifth attached file
(Sent in by A.B. Rabiu)
[6] There have been extensive expansions to the SuperMAG service:
1) SuperMAG general news.
2) Global ULF tools.
3) EMMA, SEGMA and IUGONET collaborate with SuperMAG.
4) New sunlit and darkness auroral electrojet indices available.
5) New solar wind parameters.
6) Large dataset update and error correction.
7) Recent published papers.
See last attached file
also http://supermag.jhuapl.edu/
and http://supermag.uib.no/
(Sent in by J.W. Gjerloev)
**************[ End of this issue of the ISWI Newsletter ]******************
(1) CALLISTO status report/newsletter #54 
)
(2) Recent honors and prizes won by scholars of CENTRE FOR MATHEMATICAL AND STATISTICAL SCIENCES (CMSS), Kerala, India )
(3) PHYS.ORG: Physicist presents new observational solar weather model )
(4) Chaowei Jiang, Xueshang Feng, S. T. Wu, and Qiang Hu Magnetohydrodynamic Simulation of a Sigmoid Eruption of Active Region 11283, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 771:L30 (5pp), doi:10.1088/2041-8205/771/2/L30 )
(5) Announcement3: 2015 African Geophysical Society Conference
1st‑5th June 2015, NAIROBI, Kenya )
(6) Extensive expansions to the SuperMAG service )