IAGA Division 6 EMIW 2026

The Division 6 of IAGA organises a biennial workshop on Electromagnetic Induction. The 27th workshop is in 2026 and the call for proposals is out!

The proposal could be from a single country or be a joint venture of multiple countries. A 15 min oral presentation will take place in the 2022 Division Business Meeting. They should include the location, dates and cost of the workshop.

For more information, check the website of EMIW here. 

If you are interested in following this year's EMIW workshop, register here. The workshop would be in Turkey from 11th to 17th September 2022.

Q&A with IAGA!

All your questions about how IAGA works answered in this blog!

Where does IAGA get its funding from?

IAGA is a non-governmental body that is part of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG). The IUGG has 58 regular and 15 associate member countries that pay subscriptions to it. This fee is used to fund the 8 organisations of IUGG, IAGA being one of them. Click here to know the process if your country would like to join IUGG.

How does IAGA appoint representatives?

On behalf of the Member Countries, IAGA is administered by an Executive Body that is elected by a Nominating Committee, following the by-laws mentioned here. Each country has a National Correspondent nominated by the national bodies. The Chief Delegates may vote on all matters. Officers normally serve 4 years (some 8 years). They preside over one IAGA and one IUGG General Meeting.

Can an Early Career Researcher be part of IAGA?

Any researcher can be a part of IAGA. There are no membership fees or formality to participate in the activities of the organisations. IAGA welcomes scientists from all over the world to take part in the Associations' events as well as scientific information exchange.

Can an Early Career Researcher be a representative of any IAGA Committee?

There are Early Career Liaison Representatives for each Division as well as Commission. Most of the ECRs are elected for this position. However, there are no age limits determined for other positions, which makes it possible for ECRs to represent IAGA in them as well. They may also act as National Correspondents of their country. To know more, they can contact the present Correspondents. The list can be found on this website under the 'Administration' tab.

Who do I contact if I have something (good/bad) to say/ask about the workings in my country?

You can contact your National Correspondents for any issue in your country. You may also contact the Executive Body for any details you might need or questions you might have. You can contact the Division members specifically if your query is related to it. You can find the contact information of all IAGA position holders here.

What a PhD on Core-Mantle Interaction looks like

I’m interested in how we can separate regions of the Earth’s main magnetic field into local regions to better understand how the mantle and core interact. It is important to remember that the main field is the most dominant contribution (>90%) to the Earth's magnetic field at the Earth's surface and changes over time due to the movement of conductive liquid in the outer core. This liquid is mostly composed of iron and is swirling in a complex current system due to the release of heat from the centre of the Earth, the turning motion of the planet, and the magnetic field perturbing the conductive liquid. Core flow and magnetic field models at the CMB tend to be described by spherical harmonics, which are not suitable for separation into individual regions due to large leakage being generated during the separation (Backus, 1968; Wieczorek and Simons, 2005). Spherical Slepian functions can spatially and spectrally separate bandlimited potential fields by transforming the spherical harmonic coefficients into the Slepian basis and sorting the functions by contribution to the patch (Simons and Plattner, 2015). 

We wished to make geophysical interpretations of the impact of the Large Low Velocity Provinces (LLVPs) on the core surface flow over time. LLVPs are two antipodal regions of anomalously low seismic velocity cover ~25% of the CMB surface (Koelemeijer, 2021). Long-lived features in the Earth’s magnetic field have been speculated to be linked to the LLVP structures as evidence for top-down control on the geodynamo (Tarduno et al., 2015). Whether these features apply a thermal forcing, a chemical exchange, dynamic topography or other effect to the core remains to be explored (McNamara, 2019; Zhao et al., 2015; Rhodri Davies et al., 2012).

The decomposition of SV at the Earth’s surface achieved from 5 biannual snapshots from May 2008 to May 2016 using 69 altitude-cognizant Slepian eigenfunctions to describe the Inside LLVPs. The blue circles in the global spherical harmonic plot show the data variability over the time period due to the satellite coverage.

In my PhD, we successfully incorporated spherical Slepian functions into regional SV inversions from satellite data for 2006–2021 and separated 150 years of COV-OBS.x2 SV model coefficients to investigate how LLVPs may be affecting core surface flow over time (Hammer et al., 2021; Huder et al, 2020). We identify that the energy within the region is incrementally changing over time. The spectral energy within the LLVPs at the Earth’s surface are changing over time and there is good correlation between periods of known acceleration change (from Mandea et al., 2010; and Duan and Huang, 2020) and inflection points in the spectra at l = 2 and l = 4 which reflect changes in signal due to antipodal structures. Inversions of satellite energy within the LLVPs have been relatively constant over the last 20 years and is roughly proportional to the surface area of the LLVPs but the longer time series shows a reduction in spectral energy within the LLVPs over time which is slowing over time. This work requires further investigations about the best applications of spherical Slepian functions, the cause of this SV change and extending the time period (e.g. using GGF100k, Panovska et al., 2019).

Hannah Rogers has just submitted her PhD thesis at the University of Edinburgh and is a member of the IAGA Social Media team. Her specialism is in investigating regional magnetic fields of Earth at the surface and the core-mantle boundary using mathematical methodologies. You can follow her on Twitter at @Hannah_Rogers94.

PhD Life Experiences

Hannah Rogers has just submitted her PhD thesis at the University of Edinburgh and is a member of the IAGA Social Media team. Her specialism is in investigating regional magnetic fields of Earth at the surface and the core-mantle boundary using mathematical methodologies. In this blog, she tells us about her experiences during her PhD. You can follow her on Twitter at @Hannah_Rogers94.

I’ve really enjoyed my experience as a PhD student. This has mostly been due to the fabulous community of scientists I have had surrounding me during my research. My supervisors have been great at encouraging me to get involved in opportunities outside my project and I have developed so many skills to take forward in my career. My PhD has provided me with experiences I would not have had otherwise and I loved saying yes to them!

Assisting teaching undergraduate students has been an excellent use of my time. It gave me time away from my computer models and the chance to recap my geophysics knowledge outside of my main discipline. It is extremely satisfying to work with a student and watch the moment they grasp the concept they are struggling with and to know you have helped with their understanding of the world they live in. It’s given me confidence with explaining complex ideas and provided a structure during term time.

A very rainy electrical resistivity profile when teaching undergraduate students geophysical techniques in Shropshire, England.

I undertook two industry placements during my PhD which provided me with the chance to learn new skills like grant writing for ESA industry funding, organising projects and working with different remote sensing data. It was useful to see how academia and industry varied, and have exposure to different sized companies. I developed coding skills in different languages and my understanding of machine learning.

High resolution passive microwave temperature soundings of Typhoon Hagibis from Orbital Micro Systems, 2019.

I really appreciated meeting other graduate students within my department to provide perspective and friendship when times were tough during the PhD, and students from summer schools and other PhD programmes provided a way to broaden my knowledge and discuss ideas. I sat on a committee to run talks and social events for the Earth Science graduate community, which I absolutely loved! It was amazing to meet and work with scientists of all types from across Earth Science and give something back to the community that supported me. 

University of Edinburgh Grad School Event

Finally, working with the IAGA social media group has deepened my understanding of the magnetics community outside of the main field of Earth. I’ve met some really interesting scientists through this and feel like I am contributing to promoting the work of scientists in our field and creating a wider magnetics community.

My main pieces of advice for PhD students is to say yes to opportunities, build friendships with other PhD students (they are the only people who will understand the crazy roller-coaster you are on), and take time to rest in order to work at your best.

Read about her research topic in detail in the next blog. Find an abstract of her PhD topic here.

Ranking sci-fi movies

In today's blog, we plan to do something interesting. Rank space movies based on the science and absurdity they depicted. Science can be fun, so can stupidity. But if too much absurdity is miserably explained by science, it gets a little annoying. 

Disclaimer- This list only has movies that I have seen and remember. 

So, the first movie that passes all the vibe checks for being a sci-fi is *****drumroll***** THE MARTIAN

I know many of you will hate me for putting it as No. 1 instead of No. 2 but hear me out. It's just that the chances of it happening are much higher than my next choice. Almost all science checks out and it gives us a happy ending! Also, I think I'm partial because I work on Mars. Aannddd... the novel is good too. Give it a go if you have some spare time.

The next one HAS to be INTERSTELLAR of course!

No doubt it is one of the best and scientifically accurate movies and it is everybody's favourite. It has all the elements - it makes you happy, sad, scared and angry, all at the same time. And not to forget that the soundtrack is just out of this world (pun intended).

This also has a novel to explain all the science that happened theoretically. 

No. 3 is GRAVITY

It was a lonely and depressing movie for me but that's exactly how space is if you get stranded. We really should be happy just to be alive and living perfectly well on Earth. That itself is a miracle. Any other scenario and our planet would have ended up like one of its near or far neighbours. After many failed attempts at life in countless other planets, this one just finally managed to get the equations right :D

No. 4...... I think is CONTACT

Let's admit it, we all want to see aliens. At least I do! There's no way we are alone in this huge huugeee universe. Just that I think if we are the higher beings in terms of intelligence and scientific advancement, we need to find life elsewhere. And if the aliens are the higher beings, they probably saw us and don't want to get in contact??? 

#sadlife #alienshateus #waitingforET

Well, the blog is getting long and I think I need to do at least one that is bad too. 

So, let's put No. 5 as GEOSTORM

Oh my god, the movie was a storm. In a really bad way. Normally, I like watching disaster movies (Special mention - Twister! I think that movie cemented my decision of studying science to become a scientist) or the-world-is-going-to-end movies, but definitely not this one. It was just a lot of things that don't make sense.

Other Disclaimer- I have seen many other good (and bad) movies in many different languages but I just don't have the space to write about them. Maybe we need a continuation of this blog? Comment movies you think should have been here!

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Shivangi Sharan is a third year PhD student at the Laboratory of Planetology and Geosciences in France. Her research focusses on the study of the magnetic field of planets and to infer their internal structure from it. She is an active member of the IAGA Blog Team and can be contacted via e-mail here.

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PhD in IAGA #4

IAGA has a lot of different scientists working on various topics. In this series of blogs, we will introduce some topics that are being worked on by PhD students. Hopefully this will give a better picture of the work being done in the field and encourage more early career researchers.

Hannah Rogers, a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh, says:

In my research, I'm interested in separating the Earth's magnetic field into local regions to better comprehend the core-mantle interactions. Most core flow and magnetic field models are described by spherical harmonics. However, they are not suitable for separation into different regions due to leakage. I instead use spherical Slepian functions to spatially and spectrally separate bandlimited potential fields. Long-lived features of the magnetic field have been guessed to be linked to Large Low Velocity Provinces (LLVPs). They are low seismic velocity regions in the lowermost mantle. My aim is to use the Slepian functions to investigate how LLVPs affect core surface flows over time.

The outer core and lower mantle interactions. The arrows represent the magnetic field lines. Credits : Kay Lancaster

Upcoming IAGA events

A lot of science happening... Mark your calendars for what interests you in the upcoming IAGA events! 

SEDI Conference 2022

The 17th Symposium of the Study of the Earth's Deep Interior will be held in Zurich, Switzerland from July 11th to 15th, 2022. SEDI aims for an understanding of the evolution of the Earth's deep interior and the effects it has on the structures and processes observed on the surface. 

The meeting will be hybrid and the programme can be found here.

EM Induction Workshop 2022

The 25th Electromagnetic Indiction Workshop will be held in Çeşme, Turkey from September 11th to 17th, 2022. EMIW research involves the study of all theoretical and practical aspects of the distribution of electrical properties, specifically electrical conductivity, within the interior of planets and their relationship with physical parameters.

The programme for the workshop can be found here.

SEDI Summer School 2022

The 9th edition of the doctoral school in Solid Earth Sciences will be held in Les Houches, France from October 24th to November 4th, 2022. The school trains early career researchers in various aspects of Earth Sciences, like seismology, mineralogy, geophysics, etc.

The program includes lecture series, seminars and a field excursion. Details about the programme can be found here.