We bail out banks. We bail the steel industry, the water industry, airlines and hotels. The UK higher education sector directly employs nearly 1M people. It's the envy of the world and benefits almost every area of UK society. But apparently it can go burn.

Jan 1938 saw two major geomagnetic storms, 3 days apart. The 1st had a whopping sunspot close to the centre of the solar disc, as expected. The 2nd occurred when there were no major sunspots. We can't assume that a clear Sun means no space weather! agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

9am talk after the conference dinner? Effect of space-weather radiation on the human body. With specific mention of "gonads". There's some queasy-looking faces in the audience.

It's ok, I'll finish writing my talk on the 3-hour train journey. No, sunshine. You're travelling with CrossCountry. You don't have space to open your laptop. When will I learn?

We're offering approximately 5-7 #Fellowships in Space Science this year, joining the pool of about 25 Research Fellows currently hosted in our Directorate of Science. Learn how you could join us here 👉 www.cosmos.esa.int/web/space-sc... 🔭 🧪☄️

A reminder that I’m hiring! The deadline for applications is 14 Sept.

There have been a few more model releases of the filament CME pointing to a direct hit at Earth. Here is the HUXt solution: 99.8% hit at 4:31 UT on Sep 7 +9.5/-5.2 hours. IMHO, we may see G1-G2+ storming with a slight chance for G3 levels if coronal hole effects are lingering. #heliophysics

These huge awards (rather than many more smaller awards) are predicated on the idea that a panel can foresee -- with high accuracy -- which projects will return the highest science and impact yield. There's zero evidence for that.

I've never been able to remember which are stalagmites and which are stalactites. But in French they're pronounced "stalag-meat" (those pointing up) and "stalac-teats" (those hanging down). And suddenly it's stuck. No idea why.

Every day I think I'm going to relax on the beach with my book. But I just can't resist the allure of a rock pool.

Wow, that thing is absolutely massive.

Any recommendations for alternatives to Google Maps on Android? It now seems to refresh the route everytime the app is opened (on multiple devices, so guessing it's a new "feature"). Which is a disaster in low-reception areas.

Exciting times! We're going to be looking at the long-term (centennial to millennial) evolution of solar activity.

There's all kinds of associated issues. But I don't hate this idea. But maybe that's because I'm currently sending out my 7th request to review a manuscript I'm handling as editor. Without even a single suggestion of alternate reviewers.

Today we'll be learning about inertia and friction. Which are enabling some welcome thermal convection.

Some insight into why UK Gov's so-called "Online Safety Act" could lead to wikipedia being banned in the UK. It's a word that gets thrown around a lot, but this simply is madness. Better to ban the whole internet than have the internet without actual reality-based content like wikipedia.

Fantastic example of Bandolini's law here. ("The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.")

It's 40 years since I first saw Wrexham play. Today is the first time ever in the second tier. Up the town!

Here is the HUXt visualization of recent CMEs. The Sun is at the center, and Earth is the black dot to the right. Impact is timed for August 8, 9 UTC + 16.5/-8.0 hours (lots of uncertainty). HUXt is fairly confident we will see impact - 90% certainty.

It's about time that I wrote this: theconversation.com/why-on-earth...

Hard agree. Though the "Mathew Effect" is subtlety different: It's where you get lucky early in your academic career and then spend the rest of it worrying someone will uncover you for the fraud you really are.

There's just no incentive to use rail in the UK. Trying to get from Chester to Reading on a Sunday. £100. Delays, missed connections, standing room only, can't even get down the carriage to the (probably broken) loo. Of course people choose to drive.

Another Met Dept interloper. We formed a cross-institute rescue team* to rewild him/her. Anyone identify? *I lobbed it out of window from Terry Jones (of @metoffice.gov.uk)'s office.

Blimey. Earthquake caused waves that shook the ionosphere on the edge of space.

Would you like to analyse these JWST and HST observations of Jupiter’s auroras? What about *brand new ones* to be taken in the next observing cycle? Then apply for my new STFC-funded Postdoc position! Advert closes midnight 14 Sep. jobs.le.ac.uk/vacancies/11... #jobs #astro #jwst #jupiter #aurora

Just convinced myself it's Friday. It's very much not Friday.

Governments must bring whatever maximal pressure is available to them to end this starvation and dehumanisation. this must go far further than strongly worded statements or hand wringing. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Just heard from @tmelnik.bsky.social that DSCOVR is offline. Recovery attempts have not been successful. It's going to be a significant, if not permanent, outage. forecast.weather.gov/product.php?... #heliophysics

As the hosepipe ban kicks in over parts of Reading we look at how this summer so far compares to the UK’s infamous hot, dry summer of 1976 in this week’s @unirdg-met.bsky.social blog: blogs.reading.ac.uk/weather-and-...

@agu.org journals new "Disclosure Form" is a bit of a headf*ck. Multiple instances of: "Do you have any conflicts of interest" "No" Popup: "Are you sure that you do not have conflicts of interest?" "No. No, wait, yes! The one that means I'm not conflicted, as I already said!"

Even more trustworthy than your neighbour! But as Chris says, we need to work hard at this - the all-out attack on science in the US has the backing of most of the major communication channels. It's hard to hold out against that.

New research provides evidence that cleaning up of particle air pollution by China since 2010 has increased the amount of sunlight heating the oceans by reducing reflection off clouds, adding to greenhouse gas warming and accelerating #climate change: theconversation.com/cleaner-air-...

Department of Meteorology invader. Anyone recognise it?

New paper from Pauline Simon, studying ensemble averaging for solar wind forecasting, including a new method to improve predictions of the spectral (multi-scale) nature of the solar wind, with @chkchen.bsky.social, @mathewjowens.bsky.social, C. Sishtla agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

HUXt says "CME is coming to Earth, but I have no clue when it will arrive." Look at the "hit %"--96.2%, but then look at the uncertainty-- -12.8/+19.9 hr. Essentially, according to the HUXt model, our CME may arrive as early as July 2 at 2 UTC or as late as July 3 at 11 UTC. #heliophysics

What's the lowest latitude aurora recorded? Has the smartphone changed our ability to detect low-lat aurora? What about human migration? Or geomagnetic pole motion? Does auroral lat scale with storm magnitude? What about sunspot size? It's a long paper. But it covers a lot! #heliophysics

The name of my university, Reading*, causes all kinds of confusion with international colleagues. And in our own docs: are we discussing reading week or Reading week? Good to see psychology colleagues leaning into it, with their excellently-named "Reading Emotion" conference. *pronounced "Redding"

This. I don't get the UK Gov's obsession with journal Open Access. So long as any paper describing public-funded research is freely available to everyone through some (no-cost) means -- arXiv, institutional repository, etc -- why do we need to throw £1000s per paper at publishers as well?

A journal editor's appeal. It's fine to say no to review requests, it's on top of our core jobs and we're all busy. But please suggest *one* alternate reviewer. Can't remember their email or institution? Fine. But give me a name. You know the field and active researchers better than me.

Damn. That beats me. I still use Corel Xara! 2.0 for most of my schematics, but that *only* dates back to 1998.

There's more magnetic field in the solar wind than models based on the observed solar surface suggest. This is the so-called "open flux problem". Here's an interesting new solution: helicity condensation - highly twisted magnetic field at the small scale relaxes and affects the large scale field.

My solar panels came on-line last month. Coincidence?! (Although, technically, solar is just NIMBY nuclear.)

Is this the final transition to grumpy old man? I've stopped seeing a camping trip as a relaxing weekend, and started seeing it as 48hrs of sleep deprivation bookended by two small-scale house moves.

Tis a lovely solstice evening.

I just looked at my work calendar and tomorrow I have... no meetings?! I'm totally going to science.

Amazing. Now do one with a CME!

Not sure if my daughter has been baking or whether she's just got back from dropping the hobbits at Isenguard.

We just got our first-ever images of the Sun's south pole! Taken by ESA's Solar Orbiter, they reveal several interesting features, including a "speckled" magnetic field and heated plasma rising into the atmosphere. Story by me in The New York Times www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/s...

"Sporadic E" is a region of charge in the Earth's atmosphere which can affect comms. It's caused by meteorites burning up and producing metallic ions. Wind shear blows the ions along the magnetic field, concentrating them into sharp layers. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

The fact that you can clearly see the coronal mass ejection even with the star field present bodes very well indeed for PUNCH and space-weather forecasting. Looking forward to see what the images look like after the magical processing that @drzowie.bsky.social and co. are known for.