Webinar with Dr. Viacheslav (Slava) Merkin
Wednesday, September 9 at 8 AM EDT
Geospace is a system of systems representing interconnected physical domains of the near- Earth environment: the magnetosphere, including all of its regions; the ionosphere; and the atmosphere in which the ionosphere is embedded. Geospace storms are a consequence of complex plasma disturbances that start at the surface of the Sun and then propagate through, and interact with, the interplanetary space environment, before impacting Earth. Storms occur in response to this increased energy input from the solar wind, especially when coupled with certain interplanetary magnetic field orientations. During storms, geospace is subject to many disturbances that collectively are called space weather, which is recognized as a major natural hazard by national governments throughout the globe. The detrimental impacts of space weather affect much of modern societal infrastructure, including satellites, communications, underground pipelines, power grids, aviation and others. In this talk, we will discuss some of the outstanding scientific mysteries of geospace storms as well as their effects on our everyday life.
Presenter // Dr. Viacheslav (Slava) Merkin
Dr. Merkin has 20 years of experience in numerical modeling of space plasmas, in particular, simulations of the Earth’s magnetosphere and the inner heliosphere. Dr. Merkin’s work on the development of space plasma simulation codes, and coupling between different physical regions and regimes, has spanned the domains from Earth’s ionosphere, to the magnetosphere and solar wind. He has contributed to many areas of space plasma research, including the physics of the strongly driven magnetosphere, magnetopause boundary instabilities, magnetotail stability and reconnection, particle acceleration, and heliospheric magnetic structure among others. Since March 2020, Dr. Merkin has been the Principal Investigator of the NASA DRIVE Science Center for Geospace Storms (CGS; https://www.jhuapl.edu/PressRelease/200408).