Looking Back On Last Week's Solar Dynamics Workshop - One Of The Best Meetings I've Ever Attended

The Solar Dynamics Observatory  (SDO) 2025 workshop last week was one for the ages, covering a mind-boggling array of topics many of which can be found at this link, as well as the full schedule:

SDO 2025 Science Workshop: A Gathering of the Helio-hive!

I decided from early to attend to catch up on decades of the latest solar research, and Janice was excited to come along. Although she didn't attend the presentations and work sessions she did get to meet a lot of intelligent solar physics people - like at the 'Hive' breakfasts. She also enjoyed the bon homie at the reception on Monday night,

                                            At the SDO reception last Monday night

And we both enjoyed once again being in Boulder, one of our favorite places, including going to Sherpas one of the most popular eating places, featuring Nepalese food.

Monday got off with   a bang as we sat at the breakfast tahle with workshop organizer Dean Pesnell and assistant Don Hathaway.  Conversation quickly turned to the DOGE cuts at NOAA, with Dean speculating that up to ten percent of those giving presentations at the workshop likely joining" breadlines" by September. All this because of an "unelected moron taking a wrecking ball to critical agencies."

Later, at the invited talk and plenary session, Dean delivers a rousing justification of the question; Why Study the Sun.  Well, because it's the only star we can access at close quarters, and the Solar Dynamic Observatory has now compiled 900 years worth of data in 15 years.. E.g. listing sites where interested people - not just researchers- can go to collect fantastic images, as well as data. E.g

student.helioviewer.org - Solar and heliospheric image visualization tool

And:

SDO | Solar Dynamics Observatory

An excellent in depth overview of all the talks can be found at:

Abstract Book for SDO 2025, V3

The 9:15 Monday presentation held the greatest interest for me, given the topic was deciphering solar flares, CMEs, SEPs and their predictions. She noted the critical role of the Solar Dynamics Observatory especially that "hundreds more predictive parameters" had been made available in the last 20 years. Most of these were unheard of at the time I published my own research in Solar Physics in 1983, 84.  Yes, the 1980s marked an era of a lot of predictive work but it was prefaced on greater simplicity, i.e. large sunspots equal large flares.

Now, with AI and machine learning much more sophistication had emerged with less emphasis on human assumptions and selective bias.  She pointed out this was also an opportunity to remind attendees that "outliers are your friends." I.e. don't ignore the data because it comes from an outlier.

Other presentations which grabbed interest included one by Canadian astronomer Louis Vuitte on sympathetic flares and their relation to angular separation. Following his talk we are introduced to the Gannon superstorm, which parameters are examined, and the plasma conditions that incepted it.

Wednesday night featured the sendoff dinner for Dean Pesnell, which we enjoyed:

                                           Solar physicists brain storming

The final presentation I attended was Thursday at 1:30 from Bibhuti Kuma Jah.  This dealt with the Advective Transport (AFT) model.  It’s been exceptionally successful in modelling the global solar magnetic field, as well as the evolution of Active Regions (ARs) over their lifetime. One of the pitfalls of the AFT model is that it can not predict the emergence of ARs in the farside, which impact models that rely on the global magnetic field for, e.g., calculating the global coronal and heliospheric magnetic field, the inferred structure of the heliospheric current sheet, and our knowledge of active regions appearing at the East solar limb, some of which may give rise to limb flares. These limb flares can have severe space weather impacts and significantly affect our satellites and communication systems. In this study, we address this limitation by incorporating farside unsigned magnetic flux maps derived from time distance helioseismic acoustic data.

These maps are derived from the Doppler measurements of the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) and are transformed into magnetic representations through a machine learning algorithm. Despite their innovative approach, these generated acoustic maps present notable challenges, such as significant uncertainties and the potential for false AR detections. 

To mitigate these issues,  Kumar Jha's work introduces an automated detection and tracking algorithm for ARs on the far-side, allowing us to evaluate their accuracy. The algorithm assigns properties such as tilt and flux to the far-side ARs, using information from their nearside manifestations if they rotate into view at the eastern limb. Subsequently, these characterized ARs are integrated into the AFT model. This is good to know so that researchers don't get too far ahead of themselves.

Thursday night we celebrated at Sherpas Nepalese Restaurant:

Then Friday around 11 a.m. we headed back to the Springs.  Alas, bringing with us a nasty respiratory bug which we're both trying to fight off.