IAGA Workshop Experience: Dr. Amoré Nel

The 19th IAGA Workshop on Geomagnetic Observatory Instruments, Data Acquisition and Processing was held in Tihany and Sopron in Hungary from May 22nd to 26th 2023. Dr. Amoré Nel (in picture at the South African Antarctic base), one of the attendees from the South African National Space Agency tells us about herself and her experience of the workshop.

Friday morning the 19th May, armed with my poster for the 19th IAGA Workshop on Geomagnetic Observatory Instruments, Data Acquisition and Processing I boarded my flight from Cape Town to Vienna. This year it was hosted by the Tihany Geophysical Observatory and the Institute of Earth Physics and Space Science in Sopron, Hungary. There was a short layover in Doha, Qatar, which made my journey to Vienna, Austria 17 hours in total. From there it’s a hop, skip, and a Flixbus to Tihany in Hungary, where the IAGA summer school was held.

This is a long way from where I was born and raised; on a farm in the Free-State, South Africa. There I would spend hours on top of our barn at night with my Cambridge star atlas, becoming familiar with the seasonal patterns of the constellations. This instilled in me a lifelong passion for science. Years later I obtained my PhD in Space Physics: I studied black auroras by analysing EISCAT incoherent scatter radar and optical data and for this I had to do a brief stint in Tromsø, Norway, to get hands-on experience with the instrumentation. During this time I had the most irrational fear of meeting a rabid moose on that isolated road between the optical hut and our accommodation in the dead of night (It never happened of course).

After my PhD I traded in my laptop for an ice pick, and joined the 2018/2019 Antarctic summer takeover team to assist with the maintenance of the South African research base SANAE. Since 2019 I cut my teeth in Geomagnetism with a research visit to the Helmholtz GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, where my focus was on recording and analysing magnetometer observatory data and developing Southern African regional geomagnetic field models, under the mentorships of Drs. Jürgen Matzka and Achim Morschhauser. This prepared me for my new position as geomagnetic researcher at the South African National Space Agency in Hermanus.

Group photos from the 19th IAGA Workshop in Tihany (left) and Sopron (right) held in Hungary.

We were met with lovely spring weather in Tihany, and on Sunday we hit the ground running with a lecture on geomagnetic measurements presented by Jürgen Matzka. Detailed talks on observatory instrumentation was given by Hegymegi Lászlo and Domján Ádám on the second day of the programme. Another lecture that stood out was that on Data Processing, presented by Christopher Turbitt from the British Geological Survey. Practical sessions were held by Alan Berarducci at the Tihany observatory, which included DI measurements and Sun shots. Barbara Leichter from GeoSphere Austria and Balazs Heilig from the IEPSS did a fantastic job in organising everything, and guiding us from event to event. Hats off to them, I think it must’ve felt like herding cats! Monday evening we were treated with goulash and some of the local wine at Ferenc Pince overlooking Lake Balaton. Here I could’ve easily stayed for the rest of the week, absolutely marvelous food and company, the Hungarians are fabulous hosts.

Throughout these lectures and social events we had the chance to engage with other members in the geomagnetic observatory network, and I cannot overstate how important these face-to-face interactions are for those still new in the field: The knowledge and connections I’ve gained pertaining to the development and maintenance of geomagnetic observatories are invaluable, and I want to thank the organisers for creating this opportunity for us.