Mathew Owens: Personal webpage
I am a Professor of Space Physics in the Department of Meteorology. I am currently the Programme Director for the new Environmental Physics BSc.
Links to a (probably updated) publication list, (probably outdated) CV and (only slowly changing) research interests can be found in the left-hand panel.
Recent news
- May 2021: Our new article on the occurrence of extreme space weather has been covered in The Times, New Scientist, Forbes and a few other news outlets.
- Oct 2020: The Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate has put together a 10-year retrospective, including a summary of our Little Ice Age paper.
- Sep 2020: Our AGU Advances study on ensemble CME forecasting has been summarised in EOS news
- Aug 2020: My review of The Solar Cycle for a non-specialist audience is available here.
- Jun 2020: I recently wrote a short Commentary article about the value of CME arrival time predictions for space-weather forecasting. There's a write up here.
- Oct 2019: I've added a data visualisation section to house some of the Warming Stripes animations I've been putting together.
- Mar 2019: Weather Underground has reviewed the climate implications (or lack thereof) of reduced solar activity in the coming decade.
Research interests:
- The heliospheric magnetic field
- The source of the slow solar wind
- Empirical and numerical space-weather forecasting
- Reconstructions of long-term solar variability
- Long-term trends in thunderstorm occurrence More information can be found here. A list of publications is available here.
Externally funded research projects:
- Current: What determines the open solar magnetic flux? (STFC consolidated grant)
- Current: Space Weather Empirical Ensemble Package (STFC SWIMMR)
- Current: Solar wind forecasting from L5 (ESA)
- Current: Solar wind data assimilation (NERC standard grant)
- Current: Creation/destruction of heliospheric magnetic flux (STFC consolidated grant)
- Current: Space Weather Impact on Ground-based Systems (NERC highlight topic)
- Finished: Driving Space Weather forecasts with real data (NERC standard grant)
- Finished: The heliosphere and space weather under space-climate change (STFC)
- Finished: Geomagnetic, sunspot and cosmogenic nuclide reconstructions of the solar magnetic field (Leverhulme prize)
Current postdoctoral & graduate student supervision
- Dr Allan Macneil Analysing solar wind electron observations of the inner heliosphere.
- Dr Luke Barnard Working on solar wind model initiation using heliospheric imager data and space climate reconstructions.
- Dr Matthew Lang Developing data assimilation techniques for the solar wind.
- Harriet Turner. Studying solar wind forecasting through data assimilation
- Anna-Marie Neale. Studying solar wind formation through in situ observations.
- Lauren James. Studying the evolution of coronal mass ejections in the heliospehre. Co-supervised with Prof Chris Scott
- Shannon Jones Working on coronal mass ejections using Heliospheric Imager observations. Co-supervised with Prof Chris Scott
- Austin Jones Studying the link between thunderstorm activity and the ionosphere. Co-supervised with Prof Chris Scott
- Teo Bloch Applying machine learning to space physics problems. Co-supervised with Dr Clare Watt
- Carl Haines Characterising geomagnetic disturbances. In conjunction with EDF Energy.