National competition in astronomy was held 9-11 May 2016 in the Primary school Josip Pupačić in Omiš. 64 pupils were selected to participate in the competition (39 from primary schools and 25 from high schools) and they were accompanied by 37 supervisors. M. Dumbović participated as a member of the national commission for the competition in astronomy. More information can be found at the website of the Agency for education.

Tomislav Žic had an invited talk – seminar at Physics departement of the University in Rijeka where he presented his scientific research on the subject of eruptive processes in Solar Physics and their influence on space weather.

On April 29, 2016, Bojan Vršnak presented a public lecture "Sun - Our Star" in Rečica ob Savinji, Slovenia, in the European Territorial Collaboration Slovenian/Croatian Youth Center. The lecture was attended by more than fifty listeners from the whole Savinja-valley region.

Savinjske novice st. 19, 13.5.2016

On April 27th 2016 fellowships of the national program "For Women in Science" were awarded for the 10th time, organized by L'ORÉAL ADRIA d.o.o. and Croatian commission for UNESCO at Ministry of culture, under sponsorship of Croatian academy of sciences and arts and supported by the Croatian Rectors' conference. Among the four young female scientists awarded with this prestigious fellowship is Mateja Dumbović from Hvar Observatory, Faculty of Geodesy in Zagreb for the research she did during her PhD studies that resulted in her thesis "Analysis and forecasting of coronal mass ejection space weather effects" (supervised by dr. sc. Bojan Vršnak). The ceremony was attended by many esteemed guests, among others the Croatian president Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović and the news was greatly covered by Croatian press.

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From 21 to 23 April 2016 Festival of Science was organized with the support of POKRET project at city hall in the town of Hvar, and this year's festival theme was "Science and Art". The event was organized by the Observatory Hvar and the Elementary School of Hvar, Stari Grad, Jelsa and the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb.

Science Festival is being held for the 14th consecutive year in Croatia and its goal is to bring the science to pupils of primary and secondary schools and the entire interested general public. This year, the Science Festival was organized in 18 cities in Croatia, and it was the second time that city of Hvar hosted it. Compared to the last year, organizers offered a much richer program and the Festival in Hvar lasted for three days, that was visited by students of almost all schools on the island (elementary school of Hvar, Stari Grad and Jelsa).

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17–22 April 2016 European Geosciences Union General Assembly (EGU 2016) was held in Vienna, Austria. This is the largest geosciences meeting in Europe that brings together thousands of scientists from all over the world and covers all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences. More than 13 000 scientists from 109 countries participated this years meeting, among them T. Žic, who presented a poster "Usage of the drag based model" and M. Dumbović with a solicited poster titled "Forbush decrease prediction based on remote solar observation".

From 30 March to 7 April 2016 Space Climate 6 school and symposium was held in Levi, Finnish Lapland, focused on long-term datasets available for space climate studies, as well as on different data analysis methods and error estimations of long inhomogeneous data series. The lecturers of the school were internationally recognized scientists with broad teaching experience. The school targeted at international community of students and young scientists in the field of space physics where the participants were selected by the scientific organizing committee (among them M. Dumbović). The symposium brought together leading experts in space climate studies with the objective to better understand the causes and effects of long-term variations in solar activity. J. Čalogović attended the symposium and presented a poster titled "Does a cosmic ray-cloud link operate at local spatial scales?".

Tomislav Žic participated at NASA 8th Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) workshop in USA, where he gave an invited talk "The drag-based model" and participated in a discussion regarding current status, plans and future collaboration with CCMC.

22-26. February 2016 an international scientific workshop was held at the Kanzelhohe Observatory with participants from the Physics institute of the University of Graz, Institute for extraterrestrial physics of the University of Kiel and Hvar Observatory of the University of Zagreb (B. Vršnak, J. Čalogović and M. Dumbović). The workshop addressed important aspects of solar physics and space weather related subjects such as coronal mass ejections, coronal waves, solar energetic particles and galactic cosmic ray modulation (Forbush decreases). Participants presented their most recent research results leading to a number of scientific discussions and plans for future collaboration.

From 5. to 19. February 2016 Jaša Čalogović visited Dr. Benjamin Laken at the Department of Geophysics, University of Oslo. The aim was to work on current research topics (eg. regional influences of cosmic rays on certain types of clouds), develop future research plans and strengthen the collaboration. During the stay J. Čalogović also gave a talk "A critical look at cosmic ray-cloud relationships" at Department of Geophysics.