Speaker
Description
The UK’s NERC-funded Radio Investigations for Space Environment Research (RISER) project addresses the chain of events through which the Sun creates adverse space-weather conditions at Earth and within the Earth’s space environment. RISER aims to investigate how the LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) can be utilised for continuous and accurate tracking of inner-heliospheric and ionospheric plasma structures, combined with magnetospheric modelling, leading to more-precise and advanced forecasts of space-weather conditions and their impacts at Earth. RISER will provide a comprehensive understanding of the Earth’s space-environment through the use of novel radio observations and modelling techniques to investigate coupling between solar-driven inner-heliospheric structures and the Earth.
RISER is a £3.7M (FEC) NERC-funded Large Environment 5-Year Project addressing the full chain of space weather phenomena from the Sun to the Earth. RISER commenced on 1st September 2023 and will nominally run for five years across a UK-USA collaboration.
Initially focussing on a number of case studies from previous LOFAR space weather observing campaigns, the RISER project demonstrates the added value that LOFAR observations provide, from observations of interplanetary scintillation (IPS) across the inner heliosphere to observations of ionospheric scintillation and refractive effects. A vital component of the RISER project is to also model the crucial link from heliospheric conditions at Earth to conditions in the ionosphere via magnetospheric modelling. Furthermore, RISER will facilitate the upgrading of the LOFAR-UK Rawlings Array at Chilbolton to the new dual-beam, LOFAR For Space Weather (LOFAR4SW) capability, providing the potential for 24/7 space weather observations. In this presentation we will summarise the planning and work undertaken over the first two years of the project.
