This year marks the 30th anniversary of the World Climate Research Programme’s SPARC core project. In this time, SPARC has evolved into a major international research coordination hub for atmospheric sciences, with the primary goal to facilitate research that improves our understanding of atmospheric processes and their role in climate. SPARC’s initial focus was on stratospheric science linked to ozone depletion, but has expanded to cover the whole atmosphere including the coupled troposphere-stratosphere system and impacts on surface climate.
SPARC is particularly recognised for its lively scientific community. To celebrate SPARC’s achievements over the last three decades, we have held a series of three webinars leading up to the grand SPARC General Assembly in October 2022.
First SPARC anniversary webinar
When: 21 April 2022 – 13 UTC
Presenter: Prof. Susan Solomon
Flyer for the event here
Recording can be found here.
Our host for the first SPARC 30th anniversary webinar on Thursday 21st April 2022 13 UTC was Prof. Susan Solomon from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She gave a presentation on “Evolving Challenges in Stratospheric Processes and their Role in Climate”, taking us through some history of how our science has experienced a succession of things that have challenged our understanding and how the science community rose to the challenges.
Second SPARC anniversary webinar
When: 13 June 2022 – 13 UTC
Presenter: Prof. Ted Shepherd
Flyer for the event here
Recording can be found here.
Questions that couldn’t be answered during the webinar because of time constrains can be found here.
Our host for the first SPARC 30th anniversary webinar on Monday 13 June 2022 13 UTC was Prof. Ted Shepherd from the University of Reading and he gave a presentation on “Understanding the role of atmospheric
circulation in climate variability and change”.
Third SPARC anniversary webinar
When: 7 October 2022 – 12 UTC
Presenter: Prof. Thomas Peter
Flyer for the event here
Recording can be found here.
Our host for the first SPARC 30th anniversary webinar on Friday 7th October 2022 at 12.00 UTC was Prof. Thomas Peter from the ETH Zürich will give a presentation on “Research on climate intervention by stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) – should SPARC engage?”