The following sessions, known as of today, are being convened by ASR scientists. Sessions are listed by session number and new ones will be incorporated into the list as we are notified.
A05: Aerosol-Cloud Interactions, Ship Tracks, and Geoengineering
Description: The influence of aerosols on clouds and climate continues to be a challenge in climate research. Ship tracks that serve as inadvertent experiments for understanding relevant processes and help in assessing the climate effect of more widely distributed aerosols have inspired decades of research on aerosol indirect effects. The deliberate brightening of marine boundary-layer clouds using aerosols to mitigate the warming driven by greenhouse gases has been suggested as one geoengineering strategy and it has received considerable attention. We invite papers on recent scientific results related to general aerosol-cloud interactions, with particular attention to advertent/inadvertent cloud modification and geoengineering by aerosols.
Contact: Hailong Wang
A08: Aerosols in Urban and Rural Environments: Sources, Transformations, Properties, and Atmospheric Effects
Description: International studies have focused on aerosols in urban and rural areas and their impacts on air quality and climate. This session discusses field and modeling efforts that address the sources of aerosols in both urban and rural regions, their chemical and physical properties, how these properties change as they undergo atmospheric processing, and the subsequent effects on both human health and climate processes. Particular emphasis is given to the evolution of black carbon mixing state, the formation of secondary inorganic aerosol, the transformation of dust and sea-salt aerosols, the growth of newly formed particles, and the associated optical and cloud activation properties.
Contact: Xiaofeng Huang, Charles Brock, Jean Sciare, Rahul Zaveri
A16: Convective Cloud Lifecycle during the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E)
Description: The Mid-Latitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E), a joint DOE ARM, NASA GPM field campaign, took place from April – June 2011 centered at the ARM Southern Great Plains site. The overarching scientific goals of this campaign were to advance the understanding of the different components of convective parameterization and to improve the fidelity of satellite estimates of precipitation over land. Contributions are solicited for all preliminary observational analysis and modeling studies that make use of observations collected during the MC3E campaign to advance our understanding of the life cycle of convective clouds.
Contacts: Michael P. Jensen, Walter A. Petersen
A17: Current Air Quality Issues in California
Description: Six decades of research and emission control efforts in California have led to dramatic improvements in the state’s air quality. Nevertheless, ambient air quality standards for ozone and particulate matter are still routinely exceeded in some regions in the state, particularly in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and in the San Joaquin Valley. We invite presentations based upon observational and modeling analyses that elucidate the causes of the continued exceedances and the observed regional differences in the response to control efforts, with particular emphasis on work that provides policy relevant findings.
Contacts: David Parrish, Eileen McCauley
A19: Earth Observations from the L1 (Lagrangian Point No. 1)
Description: In addition to monitoring space weather, the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) will have two Earth Science sensors that will constantly view the sunlit side of our planet from the Earth’s L1 Lagrangian point 1.5 million km away. The Earth sensors will measure the radiative fluxes of the entire dayside of Earth as well as key spectral radiative characteristics at 10 km resolution. The session will discuss how the DSCOVR measurements will complement the existing data from low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit observations. The session will focus on the novel perspective of the Earth observations that can be obtained from L1. Particular attention will be paid to innovative features in observations of aerosol transport, photosynthesizing systems and to the role of the diurnal distribution of clouds on Earth’s radiation budget.
Contacts: Alexander Marshak, Jay Herman, Bob Charlson
A22: Evaluating Emissions Across Spatial and Temporal Scales
Description: Accurate knowledge of emissions at different spatial and temporal scales is indispensable to air quality and climate change research and policy. This session focuses on the wide range of evaluation approaches that are being used to assess emissions from anthropogenic, biogenic, and mixed sources. We invite contributions addressing one or more of the following topics: (1) Top-down quantification of emissions at local, regional, and global scales; (2) Assessing emissions variability and trends on diurnal to multi-decadal time scales; (3) Evaluating emissions changes in response to changes in driving variables or through deliberate controls; (4) Demonstrating how policy and regulatory entities could use evaluated emissions information.
Contacts: Robert Harley, Gregory Frost, Gabrielle Petron
A23: Multiscale Fast Atmospheric Physics: Parameterization and Evaluation
Description: Atmospheric processes span a wide range of scales. Physical complexity must be represented efficiently and accurately for models of varying resolution. This session calls for presentations that address these challenges by developing and evaluating various parameterization methods, including global cloud-resolving models, super-parameterizations, and parameterizations of aerosol/cloud physics, convection, boundary layer processes, radiation, and process interactions. A special area of interest in the session will be scalability of parameterizations with model resolution, an important issue for multi-grid models and guiding parameter optimization as resolutions are refined.
Contacts: Steve Ghan, Yangang Liu, David Randall, Leo Donner
A24: Formation and Properties of Organic Aerosols: Observations, Laboratory Studies, and Models
Description: Organic molecules are ubiquitous in the atmosphere, both in the gas and in condensed phases (aerosols and cloud droplets). Recent analytical advances add relevant new information on their sources, chemical and physical transformations, and properties. This session welcomes contributions from field observations, laboratory experiments, and modeling on the following sub-topics: 1)“Sources and precursors for organic aerosols in the atmosphere”; 2)”New processes contributing to secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation”; 3)”Optical and cloud-forming properties of organic aerosols“.
Contacts: Gordon McFiggans, Rainer Volkamer, David Randall, Barbara Noziere
A40: Radiatively Important Parameters Derived from Transmitted and/or Scattered Sun Light Measurements from Ground or Aircraft
Description: Parameters of interest for cloud-free atmospheres include spectral aerosol optical depth, water vapor, ozone, and NO2 for the transmission of direct solar radiation, plus aerosol absorption and scattering phase function for diffuse solar radiation. Cloud optical depth, effective radii, liquid and ice water content, cloud fraction and 3D structure are important for cloudy and partly cloudy atmospheres. Papers that describe novel retrieval techniques, that compare multiple techniques for deriving the same parameter from ground or airborne platforms, and efforts at validating the retrievals and placing uncertainties on the retrieved parameters are particularly encouraged.
Contacts: Beat Schmid, Joseph Michalsky, Philip Russell, Connor Flynn
GC03: Climate Modeling 1. Innovative Application of Observations for Diagnosing CMIP5/IPCC Simulations: Quantifying Model Processes and Uncertainties
Description: Now that the CMIP5 simulations are available, there is a need to provide researchers who will evaluate the climate model results easy access to analogous sets of observational data sets. This session will focus on the end-to-end distribution and use of observations and techniques needed to fully evaluate climate models in the next IPCC. Presentations on innovative methods for evaluating global climate models, quantification of model processes, and the necessary observational data are encouraged. Submissions on what can be learned from comparisons of model output to data and methods for diagnosing disagreements between models and observations will also be welcome.
Contacts: Amy Braverman, Stephen Klein, Gerald Potter, Joao Teixeira
GC15: Regional Climate Impacts 6. Monitoring and Simulating the Hydrologic Cycle for Earth System Modeling at Regional Scales
Description: Previous studies have shown that freshwater resources are vulnerable and can be strongly impacted by climate change. However, gaps in knowledge exist in understanding and modeling the hydrological cycle associated with climate change at scales relevant to decision making. We invite interdisciplinary contributions relevant to the development of modeling tools such as land surface model/hydrologic models, as well as in-situ or remote sensing datasets that can be used to investigate the interactions between human society and the earth system, and bridge the understanding of climate change and mitigation and adaptation within earth system modeling frameworks across local, regional, and global scales.
Contacts: Maoyi Huang, Qiuhong Tang, Mark Wigmosta
This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, through the Biological and Environmental Research program as part of the Atmospheric System Research program.