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">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">Joan Feynman</span> American astrophysicist (1927–2020)

Joan Feynman was an American astrophysicist and space physicist. She made contributions to the study of solar wind particles and fields, sun-Earth relations, and magnetospheric physics. In particular, Feynman was known for developing an understanding of the origin of auroras. She was also known for creating a model that predicts the number of high-energy particles likely to hit a spacecraft over its lifetime, and for uncovering a method for predicting sunspot cycles.

<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.

This is an index to articles about terms used in discussion of radio propagation.

In the height region between about 85 and 200 km altitude on Earth, the ionospheric plasma is electrically conducting. Atmospheric tidal winds due to differential solar heating or due to gravitational lunar forcing move the ionospheric plasma against the geomagnetic field lines thus generating electric fields and currents just like a dynamo coil moving against magnetic field lines. That region is therefore called ionospheric dynamo region. The magnetic manifestation of these electric currents on the ground can be observed during magnetospheric quiet conditions. They are called Sq-variations and L-variations (L=lunar) of the geomagnetic field. Additional electric currents are generated by the varying magnetospheric electric convection field. These are the DP1-currents and the polar DP2-currents. Finally, a polar-ring current has been derived from the observations which depends on the polarity of the interplanetary magnetic field. These geomagnetic variations belong to the so-called external part of the geomagnetic field. Their amplitudes reach at most about 1% of the main internal geomagnetic field Bo.

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

Solar observation is the scientific endeavor of studying the Sun and its behavior and relation to the Earth and the remainder of the Solar System. Deliberate solar observation began thousands of years ago. That initial era of direct observation gave way to telescopes in the 1600s followed by satellites in the twentieth century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solar phenomena</span> Natural phenomena within the Suns atmosphere

Solar phenomena are natural phenomena which occur within the atmosphere of the Sun. They take many forms, including solar wind, radio wave flux, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, coronal heating and sunspots.

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 "Wayback Machine" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2024-03-17. Retrieved 2024-03-17.
  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. "The Sun's Conveyor Belt May Lengthen Solar Cycles - Universe Today". 2024-03-17. 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.