Blog

JAOT paper on water vapor retrieval

Cloud usually is a trouble maker in satellite remote sensing. Jing however worked out an idea that uses the help of clouds to detect water vapor in the upper-troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) region, where the retrieval is known to be especially challenging and water vapor variability at small spatial scales (<100km) had never been successfully retrieved by satellites. This work is accepted for publication in the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. Congratulations to Jing!

JGR paper on PET

GCMs generally project an increase of poleward energy transport (PET) in the atmosphere and decrease of it in the ocean during global warming. In this paper, we argue both of these changes directly result from the spatial pattern of CO2 radiative forcing. To test this idea, we conduct denial experiments with a coupled GCM, in which CO2 forcing is homogenized using a special CO2 prescription scheme. To dissect the radiative forcing and feedback effects on atmospheric and oceanic PETs respectively, we also developed a new set of radiation kernels – we welcome everyone to use these kernels! Another interesting finding of this paper is that we find we can kill Arctic warming amplification by varying the CO2 forcing! Read more in the paper!

2017 Connaught Summer Institute in Arctic Science

The summer school was held on July 17-21 in Alliston ON, there were 43 graduate students and postdocs from across Canada and the US working on Arctic-related research.
Here is the site of the summer school with all the presentation slides available:
http://www.candac.ca/create/ss2017/summerschool2017.html

The speakers included:

  • Kerri Pratt: Arctic halogen and aerosol chemistry
  • Rachel Chang: Arctic aerosols – sources and composition, interactions with clouds and radiation; Land-atmosphere carbon exchange in Alaska
  • Alexandra Jahn: Climate modeling; Projections of 21st century Arctic sea ice loss; CMIP6
  • Francis Zwiers: Detection and attribution of climate change
  • Amir Aliabadi: Transport implications for Arctic air quality and meteorology
  • Steve Howell: Sea ice: physical properties, trends and feedbacks; sea ice observations
  • Kent Moore: Changing Arctic atmosphere and impact of sea ice retreat on ocean and atmosphere; Midwinter warmings at the North Pole
  • Paul Kushner: North2Warm initiative
  • Claude Duguay: Lake ice modeling and observations; Lake-atmosphere interactions
  • Michael Sigmond: Seasonal forecasts of sea ice; Recent trends in Antarctic sea ice
  • Lukas Arenson: Permafrost engineering
  • Dan Falk: Communicating science

All the students’ posters will also be available at the web-page soon.
In addition to all the educative and research presentation, a Career Panel was held, that provided some helpful insights about job search in academia/industry/government. Although no session is so far announced for the next year, if it happens, I highly recommend to attend.
If you have some question about the presentations, Kevin and I will be happy to tell you more.