Infinite Horizons: October 15th “Space Weather During Solar-Quiet Times: the Role of Upstream Transients”
Speaker: Dr. Primož Kajdič (Institute of Geophysics of UNAM, Mexico)
4pm, Beijing time
Watch it on Zoom
We have the pleasure to host the next Infinite Horizons' seminar on October 15th, 2025. Our host will be Dr. Primož Kajdič from the Institute of Geophysics of UNAM will talk about Space Weather During Solar-Quiet Times: the Role of Upstream Transients.
Seminar's abstract:
The term "space weather" describes the changing conditions in the heliosphere, with an emphasis on the near-Earth space environment. For decades, it was thought that space weather was strictly related to solar activity. This is primarily because major magnetospheric and ionospheric disturbances, known as geomagnetic storms and substorms, occur during the passage of large-scale solar wind structures, such as interplanetary coronal mass ejections, stream interaction regions, and interplanetary shocks. However, recent research has made it increasingly clear that space weather disturbances can also be triggered by much smaller Transient Upstream Mesoscale Structures (TUMS), independently of large-scale solar wind phenomena.
In this seminar, I will describe some of the largest TUMS, their formation mechanisms, and their impact on the near-Earth environment. I will show that although the effects of these structures tend to be more localized and less intense than those of geomagnetic storms, they are still significant. Moreover, since they occur more frequently, especially during solar minima, they may be the prevailing source of disturbance during quiet solar wind periods.
Zoom ID: 843 9568 2857
(Our Infinite Horizons seminars are usually host on the third Wednesday of the month)
About the speaker:
Dr. Primož Kajdič was born in Slovenia in 1978. He obtained his bachelor's degree in Physics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the University of Ljubljana, graduating in 2002. In 2003, he began his master's in astronomy at the Institute of Astronomy and the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and in 2005 he started his doctoral studies at the same institutions. He earned his Ph.D. in 2008 with honors, defending a thesis on gas jets emitted by young stars. After his Ph.D., Dr. Kajdič held several postdoctoral positions, including at the IRAP Institute in Toulouse, France, and at the European Space Agency (ESA) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Since 2014, he has been a researcher in the Department of Space Sciences at the Institute of Geophysics of UNAM. He currently holds the position of Senior Researcher and is a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI).
