Nature is amazing. Watching the end-of-summer migration of Volvos to National Trust properties and garden centres around the UK.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Why space weather matters on Earth, and the team trying to protect us

The weather in space has the potential to impact our lives here on Earth in a fundamental way.

bbc.co.uk

Short version:

Dmitry Grozoubinski@explaintrade.com · last wk.

New, from me. Losing a prestigious stage or affiliation is not the same thing as being censored or deplatformed, and we should stop letting terrible people pretend otherwise. dmitryopines.substack.com/p/youre-not-...

Shocking.

If he'd been hit by a car, he'd probably not be around to ban anything.

Unofficial BBCNews (World) Bot@bbcnews-world-rss.bsky.social · 2w ago

Como mayor bans bikes in city centre after being hit by one

🚨New paper alert 🚨 A lot of space weather science depends on OMNI solar wind data propagated from L1 to Earth. But what are the actual uncertainties?

Here's an animation of recent CME activity courtsey of the HUXt model. Every blob coming off the orange circle in the center (the Sun) is a modeled solar storm. The pink blob traveling towards the black dot to the right (Earth) is a filament-CME currently predicted to impact us on August 17.

My dad's watching Sky News. Stories about wildfires and train derailments talk about weather, heat and the "new normal". But never mention climate.

Got to love my university's media summaries. "BBC South... featuring space scientist Professor Mathew Owens (Meteorology) looking into a cardboard box"

Actually, everyone prefers movies to static images, right?

Mathew Owens@mathewjowens.bsky.social · 3w ago

This is our first ever genuine forecast driven by in situ observations (and coronagraphs for the CME). It ain't perfect, but it's promising.

This is our first ever genuine forecast driven by in situ observations (and coronagraphs for the CME). It ain't perfect, but it's promising.

Florence is an amazing city. Arguably its greatest wonder: an 18-minute tram ride from airport to centre, every 15mins, for €3. No complicated ticketing or confusion. Shame I land at Heathrow.

I should not have played Assassin's Creed just before coming to Florence. I need to survive the week without attempting to scale something historic and jumping off into a non-existent pile of hay. If anyone's at COSPAR and fancies pizza and/or gelato, hit me up. Or, you know, talking science.

The proper forecasts are back up. Thanks @lukebarnard.bsky.social Get 'em here: swxforecastlab.org/forecasts.html

Looks like we need to put another 50p in the HUXt meter. Fortunately, I can now run the forecast on my phone (link coming soon). It's only a single run (it's an old phone), but the WSA-DONKI-SURF forecast puts the recent CME arriving late on the 1st/early on the 2nd.

Some very clever and industrious folk wrote a great review of "switchbacks" in the near-Sun solar wind. My contribution was very minor. But I did make this schematic. No AI. I'm kind of sad that the ability to make such sketches is now of diminishing value. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

This is a fantastic summary of key developments in our understanding of the Sun and its place in the Solar System. Well worth reading!

Royal Astronomical Society@royalastrosoc.bsky.social · last mo.

Just stepping away from NAM2026 for a moment (although not from the Sun 🌞)... The growing understanding of our star over the past two centuries has been reflected in a new online collection of papers collated from our journal MNRAS. Read the 32-page booklet at: academic.oup.com/mnras/pages/...

I get described as "deeply baffled" all the time. I hadn't realised it was a positive. No (stray) light hitting my brain.

Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️@craig.deforest.org · last mo.

The most novel part of the PUNCH mission (@punch-mission.bsky.social) is its three WFIs. Deeply baffled, with optics from @televueoptics.bsky.social, they make polarized images of the entire inner solar system every 4 minutes. The Solar Physics article just dropped! Read it here: rdcu.be/fvaSc ☀️🧪🛰️🔭

Just stepping away from NAM2026 for a moment (although not from the Sun 🌞)... The growing understanding of our star over the past two centuries has been reflected in a new online collection of papers collated from our journal MNRAS. Read the 32-page booklet at: academic.oup.com/mnras/pages/...

Wow. I'm a product of mid 70s UK and have more than a passing interest in distance running. I knew about Gibb crashing the Boston marathon in the mid 60s. But I had no idea this was so recent in the UK.

Bloomsbury Sport @bloomsburysport.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Did you know that until April 1975 women in the UK were banned from all races longer than four miles? In the 1960s, women started to break the rules and 'crash' men's races. Rulebreakers and Ghost Runners by @runyoung50.bsky.social tells their incredible stories. Out 13th August.

Over 30°C, in the *coolest* part of the night. Outside. In France, not Death Valley. That's such a massive health risk. Fans provide much lower cooling effects as air temperature approaches skin temperature (typically ~34°C). And indoor temperatures will likely be higher than the outdoor min.

Ed Hawkins@edhawkins.org · 2mo ago

France just broke it's all time record for night-time minimum temperature: 30.6°C at Vives Is this an 'infernal night'? meteofrance.com/actualites-e...

Just found this badboy thrashing in the verges on my pond. Google Lens tells me that it's a Lime Hawk caterpillar and that the colour indicates it's ready to pupate in the soil. So I've airlifted it to a suitable spot. I've so many problems with AI. But it can be used for good too!

Intensification of hot, dry periods is killing the UK’s trees and while adapted management and deep soil watering can help, the long term solution is of course limiting #climate change by more rapidly decoupling our society from fossil fuels: theconversation.com/heatwaves-wh...

Heatwaves: why British trees are shedding branches and dying

British trees struggle to survive as temperatures get higher, and many die.

theconversation.com

I know us oldies tend to think "science has always been competitive" but it really is so much harder for early career researchers than it was even 10 years ago.

Peter Grindrod@petergrindrod.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I wish I hadn't made this - it's grim. STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship success rates over time. I found conflicting data on the STFC website, so there could be a mistake, but last year the success rate was <4%

Someone should probably take the GUI tools away from me. You can now "draw" the solar wind speed that goes into our solar wind model (SURF-HUXt). Because that's a vital capablity.

I'm happy to share our Royal Society Theo Murphy special issue on solar atmospheric abundances is out in Phil Trans A 🌞 I wrote the intro — 16 papers, almost a third led by early-career scientists. Thanks to Guest Editors D. Long, D. Brooks & D. Baker! royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/issue/3...

Volume 384 Issue 2323 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A | The Royal Society

Influential themed journal issues across the physical mathematical and engineering sciences.

royalsocietypublishing.org

Space weather update 🌞 Unsettled–active conditions possible 2 Jul as a CME from 27 Jun arrives. G1–G2 storm conditions likely by 3 Jul from the CME associated with the X1.1 flare on 30 Jun. Aurora chances rise for Northern UK, cloud/light permitting. 🛰️

Cor, the bird feeder is empty again? Oh right.

All the info boards in Broad St mall, Reading, have been replaced by advertising screens. So now noone can find anything, but we can watch adverts for things not for sale in said mall. Genius. How do humans consistently manage to make the simple things worse?

How hot is it? Well, the weather is causing the fire alarms to randomly trigger in buildings across the University of Reading campus.