20th Annual Buonsanto Lecture | MIT Haystack Observatory (13 November 2019): Delores J. Knipp

2019: 20th Annual Buonsanto Lecture
Topic: 250 Years of “Extreme Space Weather Storms”: What Has the Ionosphere Been Up To?

The 20th Annual Michael J. Buonsanto Memorial Lecture was presented by Delores J. Knipp, Emeritus Professor of Physics at US Air Force Academy Research Professor at University of Colorado at Boulder, Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Dept., on Wednesday, 13 November 2019.

Great red aurora have captured the attention of humans for millennia. The first written record appeared in clay tablet writings in 567 BCE. Tens of mid- and low-latitude bright red aurora have been documented in the world-wide literature since then. Approximately 250 years ago an extraordinary Japanese drawing captured societal response to the great red aurora of 1770. I will use this drawing as a basis to describe our understanding of the impacts of these great space weather and auroral storms on society and technology. With the early 20th Century development of radio communication, technology impacts were (and are) no longer limited to great aurora nor to auroral latitudes. As a tribute to Michael Buonsanto and his abiding interest in the aurora and the ionosphere, I will briefly highlight impacts of great space-age ionospheric storms and discuss how and why these storms have global impacts, as he so well knew.

Dr. Delores Knipp is a Research Professor at University of Colorado (CU), Boulder and at CU’s Space Weather Technology, Education and Research Center, and a Senior Research Associate at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research’s High Altitude Observatory. Her research and education efforts focus on weather at the space-atmosphere interface. She promotes scientific use of civil, military and commercial space environment observations. She is a retired US Air Force Officer, a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and an editor of American Geophysical Union’s Space Weather Journal. Dr. Knipp earned her Ph. D. at the University of California, Los Angeles.