How Weather Connects to Space Weather

Dr. Jens Oberheide, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University

Abstract: 

As a gateway to space, the understanding of Earth’s thermosphere and ionosphere and our ability to predict their conditions is the key to future space exploration. This relatively narrow layer approximately 100 to 400 km above ground is the convergence point of energy and processes that interconnect Earth’s atmosphere with space. Much of this energy originates from weather systems in the troposphere, in the form of atmospheric waves. Each day, these waves carry vast amounts of energy, over 100 gigawatts, to the thermosphere and ionosphere, comparable to the energy from solar extreme ultraviolet radiation and typical auroral particle heating. In this talk, I will overview how the various waves cause space weather disturbances, why this matters for space operations and how NASA’s forthcoming DYNAMIC satellite mission will close the fundamental gaps in our current understanding to make space weather predictions better.

Speaker:  

Jens Oberheide grew up in Germany and received his Diploma (a combined B.S./M.S. degree) in Physics from the University of Hannover in 1996 and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Wuppertal in 2000. From 2001 to 2003, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO before moving back to Germany where he obtained his Habilitation (lecture qualification) in 2007. In 2010, he joined the faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Clemson University, where he is now Professor, and the Graduate Program Coordinator for the 80 Ph.D. students in the department. He received the Kepler Award for Orbital Mechanics from the Naval Research Lab, a NASA Group Achievement Award and the NSF CEDAR Prize Lecture Award, among others. He is an author of more than 100 journal publications and served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research for 15 years. As a co-Investigator of several space missions, he and his group utilize satellite observations and numerical models to study how energy from the lower atmosphere and from the Sun and magnetosphere is deposited in Earth’s low Earth orbit to cause multiscale space weather disturbances.