Bojan Vršnak attended the Community of European Solar Radio Astronomers (CESRA) 2016 meeting: „Solar radio physics from the chromosphere to near Earth" that was held in Orléans / France, June 13-17, 2016. Together with Alexander Nindos (University of Ioannina), he was leading the Working Group 2 "CMEs, shock waves, and their radio diagnostics" and presented the report on the Working Group 2 activities at the Plenary Session on the last day of meeting.

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 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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From 4th to 7th April 2016 Bojan Vršnak took part in a 3rd team-workshop: „The Nature of Coronal Bright Fronts" organized by David Long and Shaun Bloomfield at the International Space Science Institute in Bern. The results on the interaction of the large-scale large-amplitude solar coronal waves with coronal holes and coronal streamers, obtained in collaboration with Tomislav Žic in the frame of SOLSTEL research program, as well as with Isabell Piantschitsch from the University of Graz, were presented.

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?".

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. 

24th European Research Course on Atmospheres (ERCA) was organized from 6. January to 4. February 2016. 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. More than 35 students from all around the world participated ERCA.
Jaša Čalogović was invited to give students two lectures ("A cosmic ray - cloud link and cloud observations" and "Composite analysis and Monte Carlo methods - an example with Forbush decreases and cloud cover"). Aim of lectures was to show effects of space weather on Earth, present cosmic - ray hypothesis and show potential problems that were present in past studies analyzing geophysical data.