Program uses Singapore Time and is 8 hours ahead of GMT

Special Session 01 Tue-02 Aug 14:00 – 16:00

Solar Wind-Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Interaction, Magnetic Storms, and Substorms: Special Session in Memory of Prof. Yohsuke Kamide

Prof. Kamide devoted most of his career to the study of external sources of magnetic variations and their relationships to current systems in space. He found unique ways to use the worldwide magnetometer network as a powerful diagnostics of these current systems and of the way they are driven by the interaction of the solar output with our planet’s environment. We owe him to a very large extent our modern view of these current systems and of the exchanges of momentum and energy they mediate.

In this talk, I will briefly describe how our current understanding of these exchanges between the solar wind, magnetosphere and ionosphere changed thanks to Prof. Kamide’s work, how he described the role played by current systems in these exchanges, and how they can be traced by geomagnetic variations at a variety of spatial and temporal scales. I will particularly emphasize the emergence of a “system” representation of Earth’s geospace, in which different regions of entry (solar wind boundaries), transport, storage (magnetic tail lobes and ring current) and release (auroral zones, ring current decay) of energy from the solar wind are connected by plasma flows and energetic particle transport and coupled by current systems. His development of efficient and robust techniques for the monitoring of the dynamics of this system from ground-based magnetic variations is a central element in his legacy which illuminates the field of geomagnetic field and solar-terrestrial variations and will inspire for long the new generations of scientists.

Michel Blanc is a space plasma physicist and planetary scientist working at IRAP, Toulouse, France. He is also for part of his time an associate scientist at the LAM, France, at the University of Michigan, USA. He has been the director of two astronomical observatories in France, vice-president for research of Ecole Polytechnique, Paris (2007-2012), Executive Director of ISSI-Beijing (2016-2018) and several times a visiting professor at NSSC, CAS, China.

His research focuses on the coupled magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere systems of Earth and giant planets systems and on the comparative study of Planetary Systems and planetary magnetospheres. He performed intensive studies of the Earth’s ionosphere and of its coupling across latitude regions to the magnetosphere using the incoherent scatter radar technique and MIT coupling models. He has been an Interdisciplinary Scientist on the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan. His current interests strongly focus on the Jupiter system: having led the Laplace mission proposal to ESA, he follows the development of ESA’s JUICE mission and is a co-Investigator on NASA’s Juno mission.

His current works focus on: (1) the study of magnetosphere-ionosphere-thermosphere coupling at giant planets; (2) the monitoring of the terrestrial upper and middle atmosphere and ionosphere (IMCP project); (3) the science of planetary systems: (4) planets-moons-disks interactions; (5) future missions to Giant Planets and their ocean moons.

Michel Blanc has published about 200 articles in peer-reviewed international journals. He is a member of the Air and Space Academy, of the International Academy of Astronautics, and of the Academia Europaea.