About the Talk:
The Sun, a star that supports life on Earth by providing essential heat and light, can also be hazardous to human technology both on the ground and in space, disrupting normal life. The physical conditions in space that affect human technology are referred to as Space Weather. Common consequences of space weather are satellite drag, satellite sensor degradation, effects of geomagnetically induced currents on the power grid and pipelines, radiation threat to crews of high-flying aircraft and astronauts, and high-frequency communication outages in the polar regions.
Space weather can be traced to the variability in the mass and photon output from the Sun on various time scales. Variability, manifested as Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and solar flares, is the key source of severe space weather. Solar energetic particle (SEP) events and geomagnetic storms are the two primary space weather consequences of CMEs.
This talk presents observational details of these phenomena and outlines ongoing efforts by scientists to understand and mitigate the impacts of space weather.

About the Speaker:
Dr Natchimuthuk “Nat” Gopalswamy is an Astrophysicist in the Heliophysics Science Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He is an expert in solar eruptions and their space weather consequences. He has authored or co-authored more than 475 scientific articles and has edited nine books. His publications have received more than 23,000 citations, yielding a Hirsch index of 81.
He is the Executive Director of the International Space Weather Initiative (ISWI), Past President of the Scientific Committee on Solar Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP), and Vice Chair of COSPAR’s panel on Space Weather. He has received numerous awards, including the 2013 NASA Leadership Medal, 2017 John C. Lindsay Memorial Award for Space Science, and American Geophysical Union’s Space Physics & Aeronomy Richard Carrington (SPARC) Award (2019). He was conferred with a Doctor Honoris Causa by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (2019). Dr Gopalswamy received the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Elavenil Science Association and Indian Science and Technology Association. He is a Fellow of the International Science Council and of the American Geophysical Union. He received his PhD in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science in 1982 and completed postdoctoral training in radio astronomy at the University of Maryland at College Park in 1985. He was briefly the Resident Scientist of the Kodaikanal Observatory, from 1983 to 1985
For the past two decades, Dr Gopalswamy has been engaged in solving problems in solar and solar terrestrial physics using data from various large radio telescopes and space missions. In particular, he is interested in coronal mass ejections and their impact on Earth and on the heliosphere in the form of magnetic storms and particle radiation.