[Chaos-l] Recap of Decembers CHAOS meeting

[walter fowler]

We haven't been following up our monthly meetings with "summaries/critiques"
on the Listserve and I kind of miss them.  Last night's presentation by Dr.
Brand Fortner is actually summarized pretty well by the speaker himself in
the attachment.  It was a great presentation and a reminder that Jayme has
been doing a great job filling the speaker slots each month.  Thanks,
Jayme.  Keep 'em coming!  Walter

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jayme Hanzak <jhanzak at unctv.org>
Date: Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 12:24 AM
Subject: [Chaos-l] Decembers CHAOS meeting
To: "CHAOS ‎[chaos-l at rtpnet.org]‎" <chaos-l at rtpnet.org>


 This month we have a astronomical meteorologist. Dr. Brand Fortner is a
professor at North Carolina State University.

Here is a little info on his presentations.

_______________



Space Weather-Why it Matters

The word 'weather' usually refers to what earth's atmosphere is doing today,
tomorrow, next week. Severe weather, such as hurricanes, can cause havoc, as
we all know. What is less well known is that not only the atmosphere, but
space conditions in our solar system can change today, tomorrow, next week.
 These rapid changes in the space environment are referred to as 'space
weather'. And in direct analogy to atmospheric weather, there can be severe
space storms, caused by solar coronal mass ejections.

"... last night the whole heavens were lighted by the aurora borealis, more
brilliant and beautiful than had been witnessed for years before….The light
streaks shot upwards from the horizon and varied in width and length, and
changed as long as the phenomenon was visible. It was a grand sight..." --
The Baltimore Sun , 1859.

If this 1859 "SuperStorm" happened today, most of the power grids on the
planet will be taken out for months or years, creating societal disruption
on an unimaginable scale. Smaller space storms cause changes in satellite
orbits, interfere or prevent communication, degrade or eliminate GPS-derived
location information, and destroy satellites in orbit.  The challenge is
that we have only the crudest ability to predict the behavior of the space
environment. Space weather research is an active area of interdisciplinary
research: it spans the range from the interior of the Sun to interplanetary
space and includes our own atmosphere; it includes fluid dynamics, plasma
physics, chemistry, radiative transfer, magnetohydrodynamics; its tools
include some of the most advanced first-principles models. The community of
practitioners covers the entire Earth.

I will give an overview of space weather and space weather research,
describe current and future space missions that help monitor the solar
system space environment, and finish with the challenges to creating a true
space weather warning system, a project currently being worked on by
scientists at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Brand Fortner
Research Professor
North Carolina State University
________________________



Please come and join us at 7pm in the Carol Woods Retirement Community's
Assembly Hall.

Carol Woods is located at 750 Weaver Dairy Rd., in Chapel Hill.



We'll see you there.



Jayme Hanzak
CHAOS President

CHAOS
P.O. Box 3001
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-0842
http://www.rtpnet.org/chaos/

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