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Geoscience Seminar - Christoffer Karoff: Solar Connections

Info about event

Time

Wednesday 18 February 2015,  at 15:15 - 16:00

Speaker: Dr. Christoffer Karoff, Dept. of Geoscience, Aarhus University, Denmark

Abstract:

Without the Sun, life on Earth would not exist. Still, our understanding of how the changing Sun has affected Earth’s climate is far from complete and so is our understanding of how the Sun has changed on time-scales longer than the space age. In the talk I will describe our current understanding of solar variability and how we have arrived at this understanding using not only direct observations of sunspots, irradiation variations and magnetic fields, but also indirect observations i.e. sound waves inside the Sun and cosmogenic isotopes in ice cores and tree rings. I will also discuss how we can use Sun-like stars to improve our understanding of solar variability and how this variability can influence our climate. Finally, I will discuss how the same techniques that we use to understand solar variability and its influence on our climate can be used to evaluate the risk of solar super storms and the devastating effects such events would have on the Earth biosystem.

Nicolaj K. Larsen

Associate professor, PhD 
Department of Geoscience