2024 Space Weather Workshop
Photo from the Space Weather Workshop (left to right) Bill Murtagh, NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC); Mangala Sharma, National Science Foundation (NSF); Lt. Bryan Brasher, NOAA; Dr. Howard Singer, NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC); Jim Spann, NASA; and Simon Machin from the UK Met Office.
Space weather – when solar storms interact with Earth’s atmosphere – can disrupt power grids, essential communications and satellite systems, aviation, navigation and more.
UCAR Cooperative Programs for the Advancement of Earth System Science hosted the 2024 Space Weather Conference in Boulder, Colorado to help prepare for, and mitigate, potential disruptions to infrastructure from solar storms. The annual conference brings together experts, researchers and students from industry, academia and government agencies around the world to engage in dialog and networking about space weather. CPAESS was pleased to managed this event again from April 15-19, 2024.
This year’s program featured key segments on national policy initiatives in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, building resilience to geomagnetic storms across the U.S. and Canadian power grid, developing services to support global aviation operations, improving space weather services for satellite operations and supporting communications and navigation.
The conference provides mentoring opportunities for students to converse with experts to continue to attract talented students to the space weather field. In addition, each full day featured a robust series of lightning talks and posters by attendees on topics ranging from deep learning-based solar irradiance prediction model development to assessing the vulnerability of national air space systems to space weather.
Each year, the conference grows in in-person and virtual attendance and 2024 was no different. This year, there were 561 registrations with 423 attendees participating in person and representing 23 countries. Among the attendees were 61 students.
The Space Weather Workshop is coordinated by UCAR CPAESS, along with a community-based organizing committee, and co-sponsored by the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, the NSF Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences and the NASA Heliophysics Division. See the website and detailed agenda to learn more about this annual event.
