26th European Research Course on Atmospheres (ERCA) school was organized from 7th January to 3rd February 2018 by Universite Joseph Fourier and CNRS in Grenoble, France. ERCA is a high level international course on the Physics and Chemistry of atmospheres, the climate system and climate change, atmospheric pollution at different scales and the human dimensions of environmental changes. The course also covers the solar influences on the Earth's atmosphere and climate. Altogether 30 students from different countries worlwide were selected to participate in ERCA. Dr. sc. Jaša Čalogović was again invited to give students two lectures ("Solar variability influences on the climate and cosmic ray - cloud link" and "A critical look at cosmic ray - cloud link: Forbush decreases and cloud cover"). Aim of lectures was to present the influences of solar activity on climate and the possible mechanisms linking the solar activity with climate. Second lecture was focused on the cosmic ray - cloud hypothesis with aim to show several potential problems in present and past studies that analyzed climate and geophysical data using the simple correlations.

On Monday, November 27, 2017, during the 14th European Space Weather Week, held in the Belgian town Oostende, Dr. Bojan Vršnak was awarded with the eminent international award "Kristian Birkeland Medal" for outstanding scientific contributions to the space weather and space climate. This award is given every year since 2013 to the best scientists by the European Space Agency, the Belgian Solar-Terrestrial Center of Excellence and the Space Weather Working Team, in collaboration with the scientific magazine Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate.

From 25th to 27th April in the town Loggia, together with the Hvar Primary School, Split Institute of Oceanography and Fishery and Hvar High School the Festival of Science was organized for the third time in Hvar. The theme of 15th Science Festival was "time" in a chronological or meteorological sense.

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On March 21, 2017, Bojan Vršnak gave in Hotel Esplanade Zagreb a public lecture on the space weather for the Rotary Club Zagreb. In the lecture entitled "Space Weather: How to Predict Solar Storms?" ('Svemirska meteorologija': Kako predvidjeti Sunčeve oluje?), he presented basic space-weather objectives, as well as the related research activity at the Hvar Observatory.

25th European Research Course on Atmospheres (ERCA) school was organized from 11th January to 9th February 2017 by Universite Joseph Fourier and CNRS in Grenoble, France. ERCA is a high level international course on the Physics and Chemistry of atmospheres, the climate system and climate change, atmospheric pollution at different scales and the human dimensions of environmental changes. The course also covers the solar influences on Earth's atmosphere and climate. This year, altogether 35 students were selected from all around the world to participate in ERCA. Jaša Čalogović was invited to give students two lectures ("Solar variability influences on the climate and cosmic ray - cloud link" and "A critical look at cosmic ray - cloud link: Forbush decreases and cloud cover"). Aim of lectures was to present the influences of solar activity on climate and the possible mechanisms linking the solar activity with climate. The cosmic ray - cloud hypothesis was also presented in detail with aim to show several potential problems in the present and past studies analyzing geophysical data using correlations.