Tales from the North

This episode hosts two researchers who will take us to a northern part of Norway and explain us the phenomena and conditions that rule there!

Monica Trondrud - Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Natural Resource Management, NMBU

Svalbard reindeer are specialized to extreme environmental conditions. A rapidly changing arctic may be challenging their future survival. We will talk about what makes reindeer so well adapted to cold climates, and what our research (the reindeer project) has taught us about their likelihood of surviving in a warming arctic.

Aditi Bhatnagar - Rosseland Centre for Solar Physics, Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo

Northern lights, also known as aurora borealis are caused due the interaction of solar wind with the earth's magnetic field. But what happens on the sun, which leads to active geomagnetic conditions and the beautiful displays of these lights observed on earth? Also, I will tell about how to know when to go out and look for northern lights. This is based on the real-time data of solar wind which is observed from satellites situated between the sun and earth, and magnetometers which are located at various places on the earth.