Mausumi Dikpati

Last updated
Mausumi Dikpati
Born
Mausumi Dikpati

Other namesDikpati
OccupationScientist
Known forSolar Physics, Solar Astrophysics
Notable workSolar Rossby waves modeling, observational analysis and implications for space weather

Mausumi Dikpati is a scientist at the High Altitude Observatory [1] operated by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Her main scientific area is modeling the dynamics and magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) [2] of the solar interior and dynamo. The main focus is: Global MHD of dynamo-generated magnetic fields and Atmospheric Research (AR) emergence patterns. [3]

Contents

Education

Mausumi studied at Brajabala Girls' High School, Lady Brabourne College and Calcutta University of Calcutta, India. Her graduation and post graduation are in Physics. [4] [3] She completed Post M.Sc in Associateship in Physics at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics of Calcutta, India. She achieved her PhD from the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, India in 1996. [3] ‍She completed her Post Doc at the Advanced Study Program and High Altitude Observatory, NCAR, Boulder, USA. [3] [4]

Research

In March 2006, she predicted the strength and timing of the next solar cycle based on simulations of the astrophysics of the solar interior. [5] During 2006-2007 Mausumi Dikpati issued three predictions for solar cycle 24 -- (i) a delayed onset of solar cycle 24 which would start in late 2008 instead of 2006, (ii) a strong solar cycle 24 whose peak would be 30%-50% stronger than the previous cycle ('Cycle 23'), and (iii) the solar cycle in southern hemisphere would be stronger than that in the northern hemisphere of the Sun. Two of these three predictions, (i) and (iii) came true. Her research paper explaining the cause of delayed onset of solar cycle 24 was one of the top 100 discoveries in the Discover Magazine. [6] Currently she is improving her solar dynamo model by building a more accurate dynamo-based solar cycle prediction tool which can assimilate solar magnetic fields and flow data in ways used in oceanic and atmospheric predictions.

In a recent work published in Geophysical Research Letters, Dr. Mausumi Dikpati of the High Altitude Observatory National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and her team modeled Mount Wilson Observatory data throughout the course of the previous solar cycle. When they investigated and modeled surface Doppler data of plasma currents flowing beneath the Sun's surface, they discovered that the flow went all the way to the poles. [7]

Major Scientific Accomplishments

Solar magneto hydrodynamics, Rossby waves and space weather [4]

Data assimilation in solar models [4]

Publications

Solar/stellar Dynamos as revealed by Helio- and Asteroseismology”, ASPSC, volume 416, pp648, Eds.: Dikpati, M., T. Arentoft, I. Gonzalez-Hernandez, C. Lindsay and F. Hill, Date: 2010 [4]

Honors and Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magnetohydrodynamics</span> Model of electrically conducting fluids

In physics and engineering, magnetohydrodynamics is a model of electrically conducting fluids that treats all interpenetrating particle species together as a single continuous medium. It is primarily concerned with the low-frequency, large-scale, magnetic behavior in plasmas and liquid metals and has applications in multiple fields including space physics, geophysics, astrophysics, and engineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Space weather</span> Branch of space physics and aeronomy

Space weather is a branch of space physics and aeronomy, or heliophysics, concerned with the varying conditions within the Solar System and its heliosphere. This includes the effects of the solar wind, especially on the Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. Though physically distinct, space weather is analogous to the terrestrial weather of Earth's atmosphere. The term "space weather" was first used in the 1950s and popularized in the 1990s. Later, it prompted research into "space climate", the large-scale and long-term patterns of space weather.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solar cycle</span> Periodic change in the Suns activity

The solar cycle, also known as the solar magnetic activity cycle, sunspot cycle, or Schwabe cycle, is a nearly periodic 11-year change in the Sun's activity measured in terms of variations in the number of observed sunspots on the Sun's surface. Over the period of a solar cycle, levels of solar radiation and ejection of solar material, the number and size of sunspots, solar flares, and coronal loops all exhibit a synchronized fluctuation from a period of minimum activity to a period of a maximum activity back to a period of minimum activity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solar minimum</span> Regular period of least solar activity

Solar minimum is the regular period of least solar activity in the Sun's 11-year solar cycle. During solar minimum, sunspot and solar flare activity diminishes, and often does not occur for days at a time. On average, the solar cycle takes about 11 years to go from one solar minimum to the next, with duration observed varying from 9 to 14 years. The date of the minimum is described by a smoothed average over 12 months of sunspot activity, so identifying the date of the solar minimum usually can only happen 6 months after the minimum takes place.

This is a list of meteorology topics. The terms relate to meteorology, the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and forecasting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Center for Atmospheric Research</span> US federally funded research and development center

The US National Center for Atmospheric Research is a US federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NCAR has multiple facilities, including the I. M. Pei-designed Mesa Laboratory headquarters in Boulder, Colorado. Studies include meteorology, climate science, atmospheric chemistry, solar-terrestrial interactions, environmental and societal impacts.

The solar dynamo is a physical process that generates the Sun's magnetic field. It is explained with a variant of the dynamo theory. A naturally occurring electric generator in the Sun's interior produces electric currents and a magnetic field, following the laws of Ampère, Faraday and Ohm, as well as the laws of fluid dynamics, which together form the laws of magnetohydrodynamics. The detailed mechanism of the solar dynamo is not known and is the subject of current research.

Upper-atmospheric models are simulations of the Earth's atmosphere between 20 and 100 km that comprises the stratosphere, mesosphere, and the lower thermosphere. Whereas most climate models simulate a region of the Earth's atmosphere from the surface to the stratopause, there also exist numerical models which simulate the wind, temperature and composition of the Earth's tenuous upper atmosphere, from the mesosphere to the exosphere, including the ionosphere. This region is affected strongly by the 11 year Solar cycle through variations in solar UV/EUV/Xray radiation and solar wind leading to high latitude particle precipitation and aurora. It has been proposed that these phenomena may have an effect on the lower atmosphere, and should therefore be included in simulations of climate change. For this reason there has been a drive in recent years to create whole atmosphere models to investigate whether or not this is the case.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Orr Roberts</span> American astronomer (1915–1990)

Walter Orr Roberts was an American astronomer and atmospheric physicist, as well as an educator, philanthropist, and builder. He founded the National Center for Atmospheric Research and took a personal research interest for many years in the study of influences of the Sun on weather and climate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weather Research and Forecasting Model</span> Numerical weather prediction system

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model is a numerical weather prediction (NWP) system designed to serve both atmospheric research and operational forecasting needs. NWP refers to the simulation and prediction of the atmosphere with a computer model, and WRF is a set of software for this. WRF features two dynamical (computational) cores, a data assimilation system, and a software architecture allowing for parallel computation and system extensibility. The model serves a wide range of meteorological applications across scales ranging from meters to thousands of kilometers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interplanetary magnetic field</span> Magnetic field within the Solar System

The interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), now more commonly referred to as the heliospheric magnetic field (HMF), is the component of the solar magnetic field that is dragged out from the solar corona by the solar wind flow to fill the Solar System.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brajabala Girls' High School</span> School in Ranaghat, West Bengal, India

Brajabala Girls' High School is a well-known girls school in Ranaghat, in the Indian state of West Bengal, India. It is situated in Siddeshwaritala on Rabindra Sarani at Ranaghat town.

The High Altitude Observatory (HAO) is a laboratory of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). HAO operates the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory on Hawaii and a research institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Arnab Rai Choudhuri is an Indian scientist working in the area of Astrophysical MHD, specially in context of solar magnetic cycle.

Joseph Bernard Klemp is an American atmospheric scientist who collaborated in groundbreaking work advancing numerical simulation techniques and uncovering the dynamics of atmospheric convection, including supercell thunderstorms, tornadoes, squall lines, as well as mountain waves.

Julie Michelle Arblaster is an Australian scientist. She is a Professor in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University. She was a contributing author on reports for which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Arblaster was a lead author on Chapter 12 of the IPCC Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report in 2013. She has received the 2014 Anton Hales Medal for research in earth sciences from the Australian Academy of Science, and the 2017 Priestley Medal from the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. She has been ranked as one of the Top Influential Earth Scientists of 2010-2020, based on citations and discussion of her work.

Robert Moffat MacQueen is an American physicist. He received his B.S. from Rhodes College in physics in 1960 where he was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa, and his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1968 in atmospheric sciences. In 1967, he joined the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) as a staff scientist and attained senior scientist status in 1973. He was principal investigator for the White Light Coronagraph operated by the High Altitude Observatory (HAO) aboard the crewed Skylab satellite from 1970 to 1977. In 1974, he received NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for his Skylab work as principal investigator of the white light coronagraph experiment that took nearly 36,000 photographs during the Apollo flight.

Maura E. Hagan is a Professor Emeritus of Physics and a former Dean of the College of Science at Utah State University. She is a Fellow of both the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union, and was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.

Annick Gabrielle Pouquet is a computational plasma physicist specializing in plasma turbulence. She was awarded the 2020 Hannes Alfvén Prize for "fundamental contributions to quantifying energy transfer in magneto-fluid turbulence". She currently holds positions in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and National Center for Atmospheric Research at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Mary Hudson is the Eleanor and Kelvin Smith Distinguished Professor of Physics at Dartmouth College. She is known for her research on the weather patterns that occur due to solar eruptions. She was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 1984.

References

  1. "Staff Directory, NCAR".
  2. "DOUBLE DYNAMO SIGNATURES IN A GLOBAL MHD SIMULATION AND MEAN-FIELD DYNAMOS (Journal Article) | OSTI.GOV". web.archive.org. 2024-03-20. Retrieved 2024-03-20.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Mausumi Dikpati | High Altitude Observatory". 2024-03-17. Archived from the original on 2024-03-17. Retrieved 2024-03-17.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 https://web.archive.org/web/20240317180600/https://staff.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/CVs/cvfull_mausumi_March2023.pdf. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2024-03-17. Retrieved 2024-03-17.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  5. "Scientists Issue Unprecedented Forecast of Next Sunspot Cycle". ucar.edu. 2006. Archived from the original on 2006-04-10. Retrieved 2006-02-03.
  6. "Plasma Rivers Explain the Quiet Sun".
  7. Wethington, Nicholos (2024-03-17). "The Sun's Conveyor Belt May Lengthen Solar Cycles - Universe Today". Universe Today. Archived from the original on 2024-03-17. Retrieved 2024-03-17.
  8. 1 2 "Mausumi Dikpati". 2024-03-17. Archived from the original on 2024-03-17. Retrieved 2024-03-17.