Earth is protected from harmful radiation and energetic charged particles through its sufficiently dense atmosphere and invisible magnetic shield known as magnetosphere. Sometimes our host star Sun emits harmful radiation and particle bursts, alongside its life-sustaining light and warmth. When these particles reach Earth, they often break open the magnetic shield to some extent and interact with our atmosphere and ionosphere.
The ionosphere is a part of our atmosphere at higher heights wherein a small portion of the atmospheric atoms and molecules are stripped into charged particles by sunlight. Indeed, the ozone absorbs less energetic UV light than those creating the ionosphere. Hence the formation of the ionosphere consumes more powerful UV and x-ray from the Sun, thereby ensuring existence of life on Earth’s surface.
A part of the research activities of Dr Lakshmi Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, SIAS, Krea University investigates the effects of the angry Sun on the Earth’s upper atmosphere and ionosphere.
Dr Narayanan participated in COSPAR 2024, the 45th Scientific Assembly of the Committee on Space Research held in Busan, Korea. At this major biennial international event amongst space sciences, on 17 July, 2024 Dr Narayanan delivered a talk titled Global response of topside ionosphere to the severe geomagnetic storm of April 2023, where he presented his research results on the case study of a magnetospheric breaking event that happened during 23-24 April 2023.
In addition, from 20 June to 23 July Dr Narayanan is visiting the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University, Japan for carrying out a collaborative research project tilted On the impact of geomagnetic disturbances in the gravity wave and tidal dynamics of the mesosphere in the auroral region, funded under the ISEE Joint Research Program, Japan. The project investigates the impact of space weather events caused by solar ejections on the Earth’s middle and upper atmosphere.