| Session Details | |
| Section | ST - Solar & Terrestrial Sciences |
| Session Title | Understanding Climate and Weather of the Earth-Sun System |
| Main Convener | Prof. Toshitaka Tsuda (Kyoto University, Japan) |
| Co-convener(s) | Dr. Joseph M. Davila (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, United States) Dr. Nat Gopalswamy (Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, United States) Dr. Franz-Josef Lübken (Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Germany) Dr. Marianna Shepherd (York University, Canada) |
| Session Description | The CAWSES II (Climate and Weather of the Sun-Earth System: Towards Solar Maximum) program is a five-year (2009-2013) international program sponsored by SCOSTEP (Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics) established with the aim of addressing the complex characteristics of the Sun-Earth system, its variability and impacts on life and society . The Sun, heliosphere, magnetosphere, ionosphere and atmosphere act as a system of systems. The aim is to bring together worldwide resources, including space- and ground-based instruments, data archives, and the cyber infrastructure to understand the short-term (Space Weather) and long-term (Space Climate) processes throughout the Sun-Earth system. Understanding the variability has societal implications including human activities in space, reliability of technological systems in space and on the ground, climate change and ozone depletion. The CAWSES program addresses four major themes: 1) What are the solar influences on the Earth’s climate? 2) How will geospace respond to an altered climate? 3) How does short-term solar variability affect the geospace environment? What is the geospace response to variable inputs from the lower atmosphere? We solicit presentations within these four themes which specifically deal with the coupling processes or coupled interactions in the Sun-Earth system. That is, those works that highlight how the variability in one latitude /altitude/ region is coupled with the variability in other location(s)/region(s). These include coupling processes in the lower-upper atmosphere, magnetosphere-ionosphere, high-to-low latitude, Solar-wind / interplanetary medium to the magnetosphere, in addition to neutral – plasma coupling processes. Realizing the importance of these coupling processes, global scale observational campaigns have been carried out under the auspices of major international programs such as, the Climate and Weather of the Sun-Earth System (CAWSES) and the International Space Weather Initiative (ISWI), and several new insights are emerging from these experiments as well. We welcome papers that deal with experiments, observations, modeling, and data analysis that advance our understanding of the coupling processes within the domain of the Sun-Earth system. |