E-SWAN School Series

Among its different missions, E-SWAN aims at promoting Space Weather and Space Climate through the dissemination of scientific knowledge, the promotion of education and advanced training and by raising awareness. To reach this goal, the E-SWAN Executive Board is happy to announce the inauguration of the E-SWAN school series: a Space Weather and Space Climate course given yearly during the days preceding the ESWW, preferably at the location of the ESWW conference or online. The timing and location of the school are intentionally selected to lower our carbon footprint by reducing our travels. 

Second E-SWAN school: Data, models and observations relevant to Space Weather and the Ionosphere

The European Space Weather Week is highly interdisciplinary by nature and its participants are very diverse. Scientists, engineers, satellite operators, power grid technicians, communication and navigation specialists, people working in aviation, space weather service providers, they all have something in common: they want to expand their horizons and gain a better understanding of space weather and its impacts.

The aim of this school is to help early careers and people new to the field gain a basic understanding of the different types of data that are used to study, monitor and predict space weather and ionospheric effects. After finishing the lectures, these newcomers should have a basic understanding of the different data sets that will be presented during the conference and how to interpret them.

The school will cover the basics of space weather, as well as space weather and ionospheric data, models, and indices.

The course is given by qualified STCE staff. Lectures on particular subjects will be given by STCE experts who gained expertise through scientific research, involvement in space missions as well as space weather operations, monitoring, and forecasting.

Prepare for an unconventional course at the speed of light.

Time is ticking - don’t let the bomb burst.

Chop chop, kaboom!

Practical information:

October 21 and 22, 2024 - 14h-17h CEST

Enter the zoom room at 13:50 to get all information before launch at 14:00 CEST sharp.

Registration is free, but mandatory: https://events.spacepole.be/e/ESWW2024school  

Previous edition:

1st E-SWAN school: Space Weather Data, Models and Services

About the Solar-Terrestrial Centre of Excellence

In 1981, the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) became the World Data Centre for the Sunspot index collecting sunspot data worldwide to calculate the International Sunspot Number (ISN). The ISN is an index used to quantify solar activity. Since the 90’s, the ROB has been involved in space missions, e.g. SOHO, PROBA2, Solar Orbiter, future PROBA3, … Our involvement in several space- and ground-based missions allowed us to improve our know-how in  nstrumentation-building, as well as our expertise in solar physics and in the space weather domain. Already in 2001, the Royal Observatory of Belgium started operating a space weather room where researchers continuously collect, analyze and interpret solar data. Indeed, the Solar Influences Data analysis Center (SIDC - http://www.sidc.be/ ) issues every day a space weather bulletin that gives an update on how the Sun behaves, what the impact of a possible solar storm is and what can be expected for the coming days. The services offered by the SIDC have been expanding ever since. In 2006, these were further strengthened by the creation of the Solar-Terrestrial Centre of Excellence (STCE), a collaborative framework in which the sun-space-earth research and services of 3 Belgian scientific institutions were brought together. The STCE gathers in this way expertise in solar research, particle radiation, GNSS, ionosphere and geomagnetic measurements. In 2017, the STCE teamed up with scientific institutes in other European countries, jointly creating the Pan-European Consortium for Aviation Space weather User Services - PECASUS (http://pecasus.eu/) for short. The STCE's expertise in solar observations and research combined with the experience of its GNSS and solar particle radiation group proved to be crucial in the set-up of space weather services for civil aviation. PECASUS went live in November 2019. Since its start, the STCE has strongly invested in space weather courses and training relying on a firm academic and service experience.