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).

What can the annual 10Be solar activity reconstructions tell us about historic space weather?

By Luke Barnard, Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, UK.

Cosmogenic isotopes, such as 10Be and 14C, provide estimates of past solar activity, constraining past space climate with reasonable uncertainty for several millennia. However, much less is known about past space weather because as we look further into the past, particularly before the space age, reliable records of space weather events become scarce (Barnard et al., 2017).

Advances in the analysis of 10Be by McCracken & Beer (2015) (MB15) suggest that annually resolved 10Be can be significantly affected by solar energetic particle (SEP) fluxes. This presents an opportunity to provide a valuable record of past SEP fluxes, and to determine and isolate any SEP effects for the accurate quantification of past solar activity.

In Barnard et al. (2018) we assess whether the MB15 reconstruction was biased by significant historic space weather, and whether 10Be can provide a proxy of such events. We compared the MB15 reconstruction of the annual heliospheric magnetic field magnitude (HMF) with two independent HMF estimates  derived from sunspot records and geomagnetic variability (Owens et al., 2016), which are thought to be unbiased by space weather events. Computing the differences between the MB15 HMF reconstruction with the geomagnetic and sunspot reconstructions over the 115-year period of 1868-1983, we performed statistical tests to infer whether the differences appear to depend on large space weather events. We use records of ground level enhancements (GLEs) and great geomagnetic storms (GGMS, the top 10% of all storms identified in the aa geomagnetic index), as markers of years with large space weather events.

Figure 1 shows the empirical cumulative distribution function (ECDF) of the differences between the MB15 and geomagnetic reconstructions (Fg1), and between MB15 and the sunspot reconstruction (Fr1). Panels A and C show the ECDF of Fg1 (red line) in years with and without GGMS respectively, while Panels B and D show the ECDF of Fr1 (blue line) under the same conditions. Each panel also shows bootstrapped estimates of the ECDF (grey lines) from resampling the complete Fg1 and Fr1 series, independent of whether GGMS occurred. The distributions of Fg1 and Fr1 are different in years with and without GGMS, and, being at the opposite extremes of the bootstrap distribution, are larger than would be expected due to random sampling of the same underlying distribution. Consequently, we interpret this as evidence that large space weather events do bias the MB15 reconstruction.

Future advances rely on reducing uncertainty on the inversion of the cosmogenic isotope data, requiring a holistic modelling approach for the Earth system, magnetosphere, heliosphere and local interstellar environment. The research output of the MIST community is important in improving the models underlying the inversion of the cosmogenic isotope data, and consequently for improving the quantification of past space weather and climate.

Please see the paper below for more information:

Barnard, L., McCracken, K. G., Owens, M. J., & Lockwood, M. (2018). What can the annual 10Be solar activity reconstructions tell us about historic space weather? J. Space Weather Space Clim., 8, A23. DOI: 10.1051/swsc/2018014

Figure 1. (A) The ECDF of Fg1is given in red, computed for only years without GGMS events. The grey lines show 100 bootstrap estimates of the Fg1ECDF, computed by randomly sampling the Fg1series. Panel B has the same structure as panel A, but instead shows the ECDF of Fr1in blue. Panels (C) and (D) have the same structure as (A) and (B), but instead show the ECDFs of Fg1and Fr1for only years with GGMS events.