Michigan Geophysical Union Symposium Showcases Student Research

On Thursday, April 13, the annual Michigan Geophysical Union (MGU) Symposium convened at the Michigan League on the University of Michigan’s central campus. The event showcased student research from many departments, including the U-M Department of Climate and Space.

At the symposium, both undergraduate and graduate students presented their research in poster sessions and live talks held throughout the day. U-M Climate and Space was well-represented with a diversity of research topics from a diverse population of students.

The live talks featuring students from U-M Climate and Space included:

• “The History of the Northern Lights,” by Shannon Hill
• “Persistence of Methane Emissions from Offshore Oil and Gas,” by Kira Biener
• “Spectroscopic Observations and Global Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of the Solar Corona During the 2017 Solar Total Eclipse,” by Yingjie Zhu

Students from the department also presented many research posters, including:

• “Assessing the Change in Insurance Coverage and the Social Justice Implications of Risk Rating 2.0 in Miami-Dade County,” by Caroline Collins
• “Examining Sub-Seasonal Forecasting of North American Heatwaves,” by Sloane Poppei
• “Assessing the Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index and Possible Teleconnection Patterns for Ann Arbor,” by Victoria Scheidt
• “Improving Coastal Ice Cover Forecasting: A Case Study from the Laurentian Great Lakes,” by Manish Venumuddula
• “Development of Self-Calibrating Magneto-Inductive Sensor for Spaceflight Constellations,” by Cole Dorman
• “Enabling Boomless Cubesat Magnetic Field Measurements with The Quad-Mag Magnetometer and Undetermined Blind Source Separation,” by Alex Hoffman
• “Stormtime Goemagnetic Disturbance Events: Impact of High Resolution Grid and Adaptive Kinetic Physics,” by Timothy Keebler
• “Visualizing Climate Change and The Correlation with Political Viewpoint,” by Brian Cromwell
• “Dissecting Earth’s Magnetosphere: External vs. Internal Energy Transfer Pathways,” by Austin Brenner
• “Ion Composition Study at Earth’s Outer Magnetosphere,” by Stephanie Colón-Rodríguez
• “Impact of Single Fluid and Multifluid MHD on GMD Forecasting: An Inner Boundary Condition Sensitivity Study,” by Kaitlin Doublestein
• “An Extended Metric Study of SWMF Conductance Model Influences on Estimating FACs: Effectiveness of semi-physical MAGNetosphere- Ionosphere-Thermosphere (MAGNIT) Model,” by Erika Hathaway

The MGU Symposium is held each spring at the University of Michigan. MGU is sponsored by both the Departments of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering. MGU offers a friendly forum designed to showcase and reward outstanding student research in various aspects of Earth, oceanic, atmospheric, and space sciences, while fostering interdepartmental dialogue and camaraderie. 

For abstracts and the full program, view the program.