Intro on the scientific highlights at the European Space Weather Week 2025

The University of Umea hosts this year, between 27 and 31 of October, the European Space Weather Week (ESWW). For the space weather researchers, industry representatives, and forecast providers, this year,  all the ways lead to Umea, Sweden. The ESWW provides a rich palette of research topics on Space Weather and Space Climate. During the ESWW, the participants will be able to attend different plenary and parallel sessions. The organisers prepared a full program with 4 plenary sessions, 5 parallel sessions on Space Weather Research (SWR), 9 parallel sessions with topics proposed by the community (CD), two sessions on the applications pipeline (APL), and one open session (OPS).  A series of 17 topical discussion meetings (TDMs) where researchers discuss hot topics of the SW community with emphasis on solutions and actions.

The parallel sessions are organised by their conveners. Among the received abstracts, the conveners of each session had the opportunity to appoint one or two research works to be highlighted as special contributions. Based on the text contributions from the highlighted authors, we wrote the articles that you can read below. 

Inner Magnetospheric Dynamics and Couplings

by Iulia Chifu & Suzy Bingham & Riham Mohamed

At ESWW 2025, two important sessions will highlight the fundamental physics shaping near-Earth space. Session SWR3 explores the dynamics of the Earth’s inner magnetosphere, focusing on how plasma populations—including the radiation belts and ring current—interact, accelerate, and change through complex processes of transport and loss. The SWR4 session, led by Daria Kotova, Lucilla Alfonsi, Guram Kervalishvili, and Alan Wood, examines the detailed Magnetosphere–Ionosphere–Thermosphere (M-I-T) coupling. The conveners of the SWR3 session,  Ravindra Desai, Sarah Glauert, Adnane Osmane, and Alex Lozinski, gather cutting-edge research on the mechanisms behind the energetic environments of the Earth’s inner magnetosphere. The organisers of the SWR4 session emphasise the importance of understanding the interconnected system to effectively predict how space weather phenomena affect our modern, technology-reliant world.

Space Weather impacts on Earth and beyond 

by Iulia Chifu & Suzy Bingham

NASA

Extreme space weather events are under the spotlight during one of the largest sessions of the ESWW 2025, the SWR2 session convened by Karmen Martinic; Manuela Temmer; Guram Kervalishvili and Rute Santos. The conveners encouraged an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the formation, propagation and impacts of solar storms across the heliospheric system. Their session also explores the  “impact of geomagnetically induced currents on engineering infrastructure”.  

At the heart of the CD7 session, conveners Gabriella Stenberg Wieser, Sofia Bergman and Charlotte Goetz pose a compelling question to the community: How does space weather affect space objects that lack a magnetic shield? As they highlight, “the interaction of these objects with the solar wind is fundamentally different from that of magnetised bodies such as the Earth.” But what about implications for human and robotic missions beyond Earth? 

Space Weather sources, monitoring and forecast

Several sessions of this year’s ESWW bring forward studies on the solar sources of space weather phenomena, their focus ranging from new findings regarding their properties to novel methods for detection and forecasting. 

Session SWR1 (Magnetic sources of Space Weather Across Solar Atmospheric Layers, convened by Paolo Pagano, Clementina Sasso, Ioannis Kontogiannis, and Hanna Strecker) brings together contributions about the physical processes occurring in the Sun’s magnetised atmosphere with an impact on Space Weather, either by means of modeling or observations.  One of the highlights of session SWR1 consists of the development of new strategies for forecasting the occurrence of solar flares based on magnetogram data. Sabrina Guastavino and colleagues discuss the benefits of physics-informed machine learning methods for flare forecasting and also for providing insights on the flare precursors.

Connecting Science and Service: Validating Models and Delivering Reliable Space Weather Forecasts