The NCAR Earth System Science Internship (NESSI) is accepting applications from undergraduate and graduate students interested in conducting research in the Earth system sciences with NCAR scientists. Research topics include but are not limited to atmospheric science, computational science, engineering, and solar & space physics. The NESSI program is hosted by the NCAR office of Education & Outreach. The program is designed to support and promote Earth system science through research, mentoring, and community building. The application deadline is February 7, 2021.

Program website: https://ncar.ucar.edu/what-we-offer/education-outreach/undergraduate-graduate-programs/nessi

The research enabled by SuperDARN is due to the efforts of teams of scientists and engineers working in many countries to build and operate radars, process data and provide access, develop and improve data products, and assist users in interpretation. Users of SuperDARN data and data products are asked to acknowledge this support in presentations and publications. A brief statement on how to acknowledge use of SuperDARN data is provided below (click 'Read More').

Users are also asked to consult with a SuperDARN PI prior to submission of work intended for publication. A listing of radars and PIs with contact information can be found at Radar Maps/Tables/Links

NOAA is sponsoring a competition with support from NASA involving prize money to "better forecast changes in Earth's magnetic field", specifically the disturbance-storm-time index, Dst, which is a measure of the severity of geomagnetic storms. In the words of the announcement, "..we seek solutions that work on the raw, real-time data streams and are agnostic to sensor malfunctions and noise." The sources of real-time data are NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite and NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) satellite. Prize money varies from $15k for first place to $2k for fourth place. The competition announcement can be found at https://www.drivendata.org/competitions/73/noaa-magnetic-forecasting/page/278/. The deadline for submissions is Feb. 12, 2021 11:59 PM
Art credit: NOAA MagNet website

As reported on the SWPC website (swpc.noaa.gov) Solar Cycle 25 has begun. Quoting: "The solar minimum between Solar Cycle 24 and 25 - the period when the sun is least active - happened in December 2019, when the 13-month smoothed sunspot number fell to 1.8, according to the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel, co-chaired by NOAA and NASA. We are now in Solar Cycle 25 with peak sunspot activity expected in 2025." The press release by the National Weather Service with more details is available at https://www.weather.gov/news/201509-solar-cycle

Photo: Solar image obtained with Solar Ultraviolet Imager aboard GOES-East on Dec. 15, 2019. This is the sun at its least active. Credit: NOAA

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced that Nathaniel Frissell is an awardee of the Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER). Grants from this prestigious program are only available to early career, tenure track faculy members who have demonstrated an ability to integrate research and education. Dr. Frissell is also the PI of a $1.3M NSF grant to develop a ground-based network of equipment and software to study space weather using amateur radio: http://vt.superdarn.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=336. Nathaniel performed graduate studies in the VT SuperDARN group under the direction of Drs. Baker and Ruohoniemi and graduated in 2016: http://vt.superdarn.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=236. He is now faculty at the University of Scranton (Pennsylvania). See also https://news.scranton.edu/articles/2020/12/news-faculty-nsf-careergrant-frissell.shtml and
http://www.arrl.org/news/nathaniel-frissell-w2naf-awarded-national-science-foundation-career-grant
Congratulations, Nathaniel!

Following the fizzle of the geomagnetic 'Big Event' (G3 storm) forecast for Dec 9-11, 2020 due to the CME observed on Dec 7, Prof. Patricia Reiff at Rice University offered her thoughts on how to identify promising solar conditions to HamSCI mailing list subscribers (https://www.hamsci.org/). Quoting from Pat's email:
>> I wasn’t alarmed enough to send out a special alert to my "spacalrt" system. Why?
Well, for the *really big* events, there is a halo CME, centered and expanding uniformly around the sun, saying the CME is pointed our way AND there is a HUGE amount of "snow" on the LASCO coronagraph, from the energetic particles hitting the detector. When I heard the announcement, I immediately downloaded the coronagraph movie and saw neither of these.<<
Pat has offered specific guidance on how to diagnose these conditions in SOHO coronograph observations - See 'Read More'.
The Rice space weather forecast and information on how to subscribe to the "spacalrt" email list are available at http://mms.rice.edu/mms/forecast.php

Photo credit: SOHO LASCO C2 image from the NASA SOHO website