SEMINAR   Tuesday, July 6th - h. 15:00 Seminar room       Dr. Florian Nichitiu Department of Physics , University of Toronto, Canada     Space Weather Effects and consequences. The case of MOPITT on board of Terra spacecraft.     Abstract Space weather which can be defined as "conditions of the sun, the solar wind, magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere that can influence the performance and reliability of space and ground-based technological systems and can even endanger the human life" is in fact a new and very complex field which connects Solar Physics, Geophysics, Physics and Chemistry of the Atmosphere, Plasma Physics and Nuclear and Particle Physics. Space weather (or even space climate) has physical effects in the near-Earth space environment which can affect the physical-chemical parameters of the atmosphere,  the Earth’s climate and can also affect space technology. Here we will try to present few critical elements of space weather, their characteristics and interconnections. We will discuss also the important topic of radiation hazard created by space weather on spacecrafts in near the Earth orbits. As a specific and interesting example, we will present an analysis of anomalies- Device Single Events (DSE)- occurring in the MOPITT (Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere) instrument aboard Terra spacecraft. It is found that the space instrument piezoelectric accelerometers anomalies -  DSEs - correlate with the radiation environment, high intensity Solar Proton Events and solar activity .