At the 23rd SPARC Scientific Steering Group meeting held from 10-13 November 2015 in Boulder, Colorado, USA, the emerging activities on Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSCi), Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBOi), and Carbon Tetrachloride (CCl4) were accepted as full SPARC activities.
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We invite you to submit a contribution in this new session at the EGU General Assembly to be held 17-22 April 2016, in Vienna, Austria.
AS3.20 Atmospheric Composition and Asian Monsoon
Conveners: Federico Fierli, Co-Conveners: Gabriele Stiller, Ritesh Gautam
As a weather pattern, the Asian monsoon impacts the lives of more than a billion people. With rapid population and economic growth across the monsoon region, it becomes a pressing concern that the monsoon convection coupled to surface emissions is playing a significant role in the region’s air quality. The uplift of pollutants also enhances aerosol–cloud interactions that may change the behavior of the monsoon. The chemical transport effect of the monsoon system is seen from satellites as an effective transport path for pollutants to enter the stratosphere. The monsoon system is therefore relevant to scales and processes bridging regional air quality, climate change, and global chemistry-climate interaction. The scientific scope of the session includes a) the impact of Asian monsoon, coupled to local emission on air quality, (b) Aerosols, clouds, and their interactions with the Asian monsoon, (c) the role of the monsoon dynamics and convection on chemistry and chemical transport in the Upper-Troposphere Lower-Stratosphere. Both observations and model analyses on related topics are welcome.
Deadline for support applications: 1 December 2015.
Deadline for abstract submission: 13 January 2016.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
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Application deadline: 15 December 2015
Join leading experts and scientists to explore our planet from space and learn how Earth observations are used to monitor climate change. Aimed at a broad audience, this course takes participants through five themed weeks with online lectures, quizzes, and the chance to engage in discussions with the course educators and other learners.
The course can help decision makers, policy makers, educators and communicators, to gain a better insight into how satellite data can help them assess the state of our climate and its changes, in order to support climate science, and adaptation and mitigation decisions.
A selection of new science articles from the past week of interest to the SPARC community (a SPARC Office choice).
Comparison of the CMAM30 data set with ACE-FTS and OSIRIS: polar regions. By D. Pendlebury et al. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
Tropical sources and sinks of carbonyl sulfide observed from space. By N. Glatthor et al. in Geophysical Research Letters.
A breath of fresh air. [Editorial]. Nature.
Discussion papers – open for comment
A Joint data record of tropospheric ozone from Aura-TES and MetOp-IASI. By H. Oetjen et al in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.
The amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached yet another new record high in 2014, says WMO.
According to the latest WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, between 1990 and 2014 there was a 36% increase in radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – because of long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) from industrial, agricultural and domestic activities.
Find the WMO Media Release (issued 9 November 2015).
Find the WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.
A selection of new science articles from the past week of interest to the SPARC community (a SPARC Office choice).
Wintertime atmospheric response to Atlantic multidecadal variability: effect of stratospheric representation and ocean–atmosphere coupling. By Y. Peings and G. Magnusdottir in Climate Dynamics.
Synoptic-Scale Behavior of the Extratropical Tropopause Inversion Layer. By R.P. Kedzierski et al. in Geophysical Research Letters.
Methyl chloride as a tracer of tropical tropospheric air in the lowermost stratosphere inferred from IAGOS-CARIBIC passenger aircraft measurements. By T. Umezawa et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
An assessment of upper-troposphere and lower-stratosphere water vapor in MERRA, MERRA2 and ECMWF reanalyses using Aura MLS observations. By J.H. Jiang et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
Methane and nitrous oxide retrievals from MIPAS-ENVISAT. By J. Plieninger et al. in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques.
Evaluation of methods for gravity wave extraction from middle-atmospheric lidar temperature measurements. By B. Ehard et al. in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques.
Did the 2011 Nabro eruption affect the optical properties of ice clouds? By A. Meyer et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
Discussion papers – open for comment
Carbon monoxide climatology derived from the trajectory mapping of global MOZAIC-IAGOS data. By M. Osman et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.
Climatic impacts of stratospheric geoengineering with sulfate, black carbon and titania injection. By A.C. et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.
Drivers of changes in stratospheric and tropospheric ozone between year 2000 and 2100. By A. Banerjee et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.
A selection of new science articles from the past week of interest to the SPARC community (a SPARC Office choice).
Seasonal winter forecasts and the stratosphere. By A.A. Scaife et al. in Atmospheric Science Letters.
Water vapor stratification and dynamical warming behind the sharpness of the Earth’s mid-latitude tropopause. By A.P. Ferreira in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.
Spatial mapping of ground-based observations of total ozone. By K.-L. Chang et al. in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques.
Solar signals in CMIP-5 Simulations: Effects of Atmosphere–ocean Coupling. By S. Misios et al. in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.
Impacts of high-latitude volcanic eruptions on ENSO and AMOC. By F.S.R. Pausata in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Airborne measurements of organic bromine compounds in the Pacific tropical tropopause layer. By M.A. Navarro et al. in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Atlantic hurricane surge response to geoengineering. By J.C. Moore et al. in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Solar geoengineering using solid aerosol in the stratosphere. By D.K. Weisenstein et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
Stratospheric geoengineering impacts on El Niño/Southern Oscillation. By C.J. Gabriel and A. Robock in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
Radiative Impacts of the 2011 Abrupt Drops in Water Vapor and Ozone in the Tropical Tropopause Layer. By D.M. Gilford et al. in the Journal of Climate.
Enhanced long-range forecast skill in boreal winter following stratospheric strong vortex conditions. By O.P. Tripathi et al. in Environmental Research Letters.
Discussion papers – open for comment
Upper-tropospheric humidity changes under constant relative humidity. By K. Gierens and K. Eleftheratos in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.
A stable and large vortex, concentric around the south pole and characterised by low temperatures explains why 2015 experiences the largest ozone hole since 2006.
Find WMO Antarctic Ozone Bulletin (published on 29. October 2015).
Deadline for abstract submission: 1 February 2016
Deadline for registration: 21 April 2016
The workshop theme is the stratospheric sulfur burden and seeks to address questions like:
What can be established through gas and particle phase measurements?
What processes are instrumental in causing variations in the stratospheric sulfur burden, e. g. volcanoes, the summer Asian monsoon, and other processes that lead to cross-tropopause transport?
How well are these processes captured by measurements and by models?
First results of the SSiRC Model and data Intercomparison Project will also be discussed. While contributions on a range of topics around the broad theme of stratospheric sulfur and its role in climate are welcome, the workshop will be organized around the following primary themes:
The sulfur burden
Volcanoes and stratospheric aerosol variability
The upper troposphere/lower stratosphere (UTLS)
The meeting occurs the week following the EGU as a convenience to those travelling from outside Europe who may wish to attend both. A SSiRC related session for the EGU (led by Graham Mann) has been proposed.
Find more details on the SSiRC website.
Please address questions to Larry Thomason or Stefanie Kremser.