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Links to a (probably updated) publication list, (probably outdated) CV and (only slowly changing) research interests can be found in the left-hand panel.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
- Mar 2019: Weather Underground has reviewed the climate implications (or lack thereof) of reduced solar activity in the coming decade.
- Oct 2018: The Independent and The Mail report on our recent work on data assimilation for the solar wind.
- Jan 2018: The Guardian has done an excellent job of debunking the recent Little Ice Age stories, with reference to recent Reading work.
- Dec 2017: Commentary on my recent solar wind forecasting work from The American Geophysical Union's EOS and the Space Weather journal.
- Dec 2017: My article on the correspondence between the Little Ice Age and the Maunder minimum is Open Access here.
- Nov 2017: Interested in doing a PhD in space weather? Apply here.
- Jun 2017: My article on the coherence of CMEs has been published. IFLScience provided a good write up.
- Feb 2017: Kim Tucker-Hood, my PhD student co-supervised with Prof. Chris Scott, has passed her viva, subject to minor thesis corrections. Huge congratulations to Kim!
- Jan 2017: My article on reconstructing the solar wind over the last four centuries has been published. There's a nice write up on IFLScience.
- Jun 2016: The Guardian have a nice summary of my recent work on thunder day observations.
- Mar 2016: I'm now an Associate Editor for Solar Physics, specialising in heliospheric science.
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 More information can be found here. A list of publications is available here.
Research Projects:
- Solar wind data assimilation (NERC funded)
- Creation/destruction of heliospheric magnetic flux (STFC funded)
- Space Weather Impact on Ground-based Systems (NERC funded)
- Driving Space Weather forecasts with real data (NERC funded): Can determining background solar wind conditions by using data from the NASA STEREO spacecraft improve the accuracy of space weather forecast models?
- The heliosphere and space weather under space-climate change (STFC funded)
- Geomagnetic, sunspot and cosmogenic nuclide reconstructions of the solar magnetic field (Leverhulme funded)
Current postdoctoral & graduate student supervision
- 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.
- 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.