3rd Space, Climate and Planetary Sciences Webinar Conference

3rd Space, Climate and Planetary Sciences Webinar Conference

Space and Planetary Department, SSGI

March 28-29, 2023

The SPSD at SSGI organized a webinar conference on March 28-29, 2023, at the Washington Hotel in Addis Ababa. The conference aimed to unite researchers, engineers, and leading scientists involved in space, planetary, and atmospheric research and application development. Its objectives were to share the latest findings, assess research and application progress, and explore collaborative opportunities among universities and research centers. The conference, titled “Space and Planetary Sciences Conference (SPSC),” focused on various research areas within these fields. Overall, SPSC provided a platform for knowledge exchange, resource evaluation, and future collaboration planning in space, planetary, and atmospheric sciences.

• Ionospheric studies
• Space weather and geomagnetism
• Updates in opportunities/challenges in the space sciences research and technology
• Atmospheric sciences/ Urban weather, climate and air quality

For a better success of the conference, the department members took their own roles as conference organizers in action plan preparation, thematic areas identification and conference call preparation and announcement via various platforms, sending feedback, preparation of the webinar outlets and chairing conference sessions. In total, researchers from various national universities (including Bahir Dar, Jimma, and Wollega universities) and international institutes/universities (such as the University of Michigan (USA), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (USA), and the University of Oulu (Finland)) presented approximately 15 papers. Additionally, about 15-30 researchers attended the two-day virtual conference. In summary, the two-day conference featured a total of 6 papers presented by internal participants and 9 papers presented by external participants in the thematic areas mentioned, across 7 sessions, concluding with a panel discussion.

Day one: 28 March 2023

The first day of the conference was dedicated to space and plasma physics. They gave presentations on Modeling of Equatorial Ionization Anomaly, Formation of post sunset equatorial ionospheric irregularities, mid-latitude ionospheric response to geomagnetic storm, MHD waves and different constraints that affect its propagation, Ionospheric irregularity pattern on high latitude region, Ionospheric response to geomagnetic storms over the Europe-African Longitude sector using multi-instrument observations, Ionospheric and magnetic signatures of extreme space weather events over Africa, Understanding space weather and its impact on technology, and Statistics of MSTIDs at high latitudes using ionosonde measurements. Following the presentations, participants engaged in Q&A sessions, actively posing questions and sharing their thoughts on the presented topics.

Day two: 29 March 2023

The second day of the conference focused on space, climate and planetary sciences and space technologies. Following this, various topics were presented, including the impact of energy deposition hemispherical asymmetry on LSTID characteristics during geomagnetic storms, the exacerbation of drought problems by anthropogenic urban heat islands, ionospheric response to geomagnetic storms, challenges and opportunities in predicting unique African plasma turbulence, the effects of total solar eclipses on Ionospheric TEC, the utilization of machine learning in studying the equatorial ionization anomaly, and the development of a Magneto-Inductive magnetometer system for boom-less satellites, global magnetometer networks, and backyard citizen-science space weather monitors. Following the presentations, a Q&A session and a panel discussion ensued, addressing the difficulties and possibilities in the presented topics and fields.

Closing Session

In general, the two-day webinar conference on space, climate, and planetary sciences provided an excellent platform for researchers, scientists, and students to share their research findings and discuss the latest developments in their fields. The conference highlighted the importance of collaboration between institutions and the need to address the challenges faced by the scientific community in their respective fields.

The successful conference generated valuable insights for advancing space science, climate science, and planetary sciences. In the closing session, participants discussed future conference directions, emphasizing collaboration, forming committees from participating institutions to organize, raise funds, and unite stakeholders for future conferences in these fields.