Biography
Mike Lockwood will look at the great auroral events of 10/11 May and 10 October 2024 and place them into context by comparing with similar events that have occurred in the past. To do so requires thought about how the great sensitivity of modern digital cameras on mobile phones has influenced the global detection of aurora, and how population growth, education, and the internet have facilitated reporting of observations.
Allowing for such factors implies that the May event was the third-largest event known, as quantified by the lowest geomagnetic latitude reached since 1650 at the start of the Maunder minimum. The largest was on 4 February 1872 and was studied by father Angelo Secchi who also studied its disruptive effects on telegraph systems (what we would now call “space weather” effects). The second largest is the famous Carrington event of September 1859.
The science of forecasting future events and their potential space weather implications will be discussed.
Synopsis
Mike Lockwood is a Space Environment Physicist who gained his degree and PhD from Exeter University. Since then has worked at: Auckland University, New Zealand; the Royal Aircraft Establishment; Rutherford Appleton Laboratory’s Space Science and Technology Department; NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center; Southampton University; The University Centre on Svalbard; and is now at the University of Reading.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and currently president of the Royal Astronomical Society. He has published more than 450 papers on many aspects of space physics, of which the most fascinating and aesthetically beautiful is the aurora.
