Rate My Professor Annika Seppälä

Associate Professor Annika Seppälä is a physicist in the Department of Physics at the University of Otago, specializing in upper atmospheric and space physics. She earned her PhD in space physics from the University of Helsinki in 2007, with a thesis titled 'Observations of production and transport of NOx formed by energetic particle precipitation in the polar night atmosphere.' Her career includes serving as a Marie Curie Fellow at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, United Kingdom, from September 2009 to August 2011, an Academy Fellow at the Finnish Meteorological Institute's Earth Observation Programme in Helsinki from April 2002 to July 2022, and her current role as Associate Professor at the University of Otago since July 2017. Seppälä leads the Atmosphere and Climate Group within the department and is an affiliate member of the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies. She coordinates courses including PHSI 243 Environmental Physics, PHSI 365 Computational Physics, and PHSI 422 Upper Atmospheric and Space Physics.

Seppälä's research focuses on the effects of solar activity and energetic particle precipitation on the Earth's polar atmosphere, encompassing space physics, ionospheric physics, atmospheric chemistry, dynamics, and meteorology. Her work examines chemical and dynamical coupling mechanisms between atmospheric layers and their role in linking solar activity to regional climate, including contributions to ozone column variability and atmospheric chemistry impacts from solar storms. Key publications include 'Polar mesospheric ozone loss initiates downward coupling of solar signal in the Northern Hemisphere' (2025), 'Potential drivers of the recent large Antarctic ozone holes' (2023), 'Ozone impact from solar energetic particles cools the polar stratosphere' (2022), 'Missing driver in the Sun-Earth connection from energetic electron impacts mesospheric ozone' (2014), 'Observational evidence of energetic particle precipitation NOx (EPP-NOx) interaction with chlorine curbing Antarctic ozone loss' (2021), 'Quantifying the contribution of transport to Antarctic springtime ozone column variability' (2025), and contributions to solar forcing datasets for CMIP7 (2024-2025). Her research has garnered over 4700 citations on Google Scholar. Along with colleagues in Physics, she secured part of a $10.5 million grant in 2025 as part of the university's $41 million funding success.