MIST

Magnetosphere, Ionosphere and Solar-Terrestrial

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2026 MIST Council Election Results

It is our pleasure to announce the results of the latest MIST Council Election.

  • Samuel Wharton (University of Leicester) is elected for a 3 year term as a MIST Councillor
  • Jewel Abbey Relampagos (Lancaster University) is elected for a 1 year term as the MIST Student Representative

In addition, due to concerns from the community regarding the ongoing UKRI/STFC funding situation, MIST Council have also decided to charter Mark Lester (University of Leicester) as an additional councillor to inform and steer the council in matters related to this specific brief, as set out in Article 4.5 of the MIST Charter.

We would like to congratulate everyone on their new roles. The full composition of Council can be found on the MIST website (https://www.mist.ac.uk/community/mist-council). We would like to thank all the candidates for putting themselves forward and everyone who took part in the voting. We received votes from 132 people which represents a turnout of 21.5% of people registered to receive the MIST emailing list.

Finally, MIST Council would like to extend their thanks and gratitude to our outgoing members: Fiona Ball and Georgios Nicolaou. We would also like to say a special thank you to Andy Smith who was co-opted to be on MIST council while Rosie Johnson was on maternity leave, thank you for all of your hard work.

Open Letter Ready For Signatories

Protect MIST Science! Sign the MIST Community Open Letter on the STFC funding cuts!

https://sites.google.com/view/uk-mist-community-open-letter

 

Statement from MIST Council regarding the STFC Funding Situation

Statement from MIST Council regarding the STFC Funding Situation

MIST Council is deeply concerned by the ongoing STFC funding uncertainty and its impact on our community and beyond.

The current combination of prospective delayed and reduced funding, together with already volatile financial situations at universities across the UK, is placing significant strain on research groups. In some cases, institutions may be unable to support researchers through gaps between projects, increasing precarity across the community and adding significant pressure on early-career researchers.

We are concerned that continued uncertainty risks accelerating a brain drain from the UK, as skilled researchers reconsider their future in a system offering limited stability. The loss of expertise at any career stage would have lasting consequences for UK space science.

 

What is going on?

For those that are unaware of the situation, it is complex and evolving. We suggest the following sources to get up to speed on the current developments.

https://www.sciencecampaign.org.uk/analysis-and-publications/detail/what-is-happening-with-ukri-funding-and-the-stfc-cuts/

https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/proposed-budget-cuts-catastrophe-uk-astronomy

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2514481-physicists-warn-of-catastrophic-impact-from-uk-science-cuts/

 

What are we doing about it?

Behind the scenes, MIST Council is actively engaging with relevant parties to understand the scale of the challenge and to identify constructive ways forward.

  • We are seeking seasoned members of the community to join MIST Council on a task force to help develop options and represent the needs of our community. If you would like to be involved, please reach out to us via the MIST Council email (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) by the end of this week (13th February 2026).
  • In addition to the task force, we want to provide an open forum for discussion and collective input among all members of the wider MIST community. We are exploring options and will be in touch as soon as possible with further details.
  • We believe in working together in the face of the current challenges and we are collaborating with UKSP and others to strive for a fair and positive outcome for all. We are reaching out to members of the SSAP (Solar System Advisory Panel) to explore the hosting of a community town hall meeting, like the one already being organised by the AAP (Astronomy Advisory Panel), to provide an open forum for discussion and collective input.

 

What can you do to help?

There are several open letters representing people in various career stages that have been made available to sign. We encourage you to read the relevant letter(s) and to sign them if you support them:

The Royal Astronomical Society are also urging Fellows to lobby their MPs against the cuts, and have included a template letter that can be used to do so:
https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/ras-fellows-urged-lobby-against-unprecedented-cuts

 

MIST Council will continue to advocate for transparency, stability, and funding structures that recognise both the long-term nature of our science and the people who deliver it.
We thank you for your continued support in this period of uncertainty.

 

Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you have further suggestions.
MIST Council

Announcement of New MIST Council 2025

We are very pleased to announce the following members of the community have been elected to MIST Council:

  • Gemma Bower (University of Leicester), MIST Councillor
  • Tom Elsden (University of St Andrews), MIST Councillor
  • Cameron Patterson (Lancaster University), MIST Councillor
  • Fiona Ball (University of Southampton), Student Representative

They will begin their terms in July 2025.

We thank outgoing MIST Council members: Maria Walach, Chiara Lazzeri and Emma Woodfield. Andy Smith will remain on council a little longer as a co-opted member to cover Rosie Johnson's maternity leave.

The current composition of Council can be found on our website (https://www.mist.ac.uk/community/mist-council).

Announcement of New MIST Councillors.

We are very pleased to announce the following members of the community have been elected unopposed to MIST Council:

  • Rosie Johnson (Aberystwyth University), MIST Councillor
  • Matthew Brown (University of Birmingham), MIST Councillor
  • Chiara Lazzeri (MSSL, UCL), Student Representative

Rosie, Matthew, and Chiara will begin their terms in July. This will coincide with Jasmine Kaur Sandhu, Beatriz Sanchez-Cano, and Sophie Maguire outgoing as Councillors.

The current composition of Council can be found on our website, and this will be amended in July to reflect this announcement (https://www.mist.ac.uk/community/mist-council).

Ubiquitous threshold for coherent structures in solar wind turbulence

By Alina Bendt (University of Warwick)

The solar wind may be heated by turbulence. Coherent structures which are one possible mediating mechanism of the turbulent cascade may dissipate energy. The partial variance increment (PVI) is routinely used to characterize and identify coherent structures. Previously the threshold beyond which fluctuations may be coherent structures was identified by comparisons to a Gaussian distribution. We compare wavelet decompositions with the Haar and 10th-order Daubechies wavelets to determine the threshold from the physical character of the fluctuations. These wavelets are sensitive to sharp changes and oscillations in the time series respectively. Comparisons of the fluctuation distributions obtained from these two wavelets reveal a core and tail., the latter is dominated by coherent structures. The transition from core to tail identifies the PVI threshold. This threshold coincides with the PVI value where the PVI distributions obtained from the Haar and Db10 wavelets start to depart from each other.  We find a single value for the threshold in each the kinetic and inertial ranges. This threshold is independent of heliocentric distance and solar wind conditions. The detailed behaviour of the fluctuations above the threshold varies, reflecting different ways that turbulence develops with distance from the sun. This suggests an underlying mechanism governing these coherent structures that is the same regardless of the specific plasma conditions.

 

Compensated Quantile-Quantile (QQ) plots discriminate where the Haar (sharp changes) and Db10 (wave-packet) decomposed PVI fluctuation distributions diverge (gray shading) for all solar wind intervals in the kinetic range. The upper panels [(a)–(c)] illustrate the compensated QQ plots. [(d)–(j)] are compensated QQ plots in the kinetic range overplotted for all intervals. These are divided into three categories based on heliocentric distance, (i) 0.3 R < 0.4 au, (ii) 0.4 < R < 0.8 au, and (iii) R > 0.8 au (rows), shown for all magnetic field components (columns). The different scales τ are color coded from dark blue (0.25 s) to light blue (2 s). The overplotted PVI threshold of 2.2 (marked by a black vertical line) is the same for all panels, capturing where the Haar and Db10 derived PVI distributions diverge. The gray shaded region determined from the variance of the threshold ranges from 2.1 to 2.7. This threshold is independent of the scale τ of the turbulence and heliocentric distance. Dashed horizontal lines are at PVI ±0.2 for reference.

See publication for details:
Bendt & Chapman (2025) Ubiquitous threshold for coherent structures in solar wind turbulence, Phys. Rev. Research, doi:10.1103/PhysRevResearch.7.023176