GML Seminars

For questions about GML seminars, contact Julie Singewald, Phone: 720-260-4572

Visitor Information: The Visitors Center and entrance to the Boulder Department of Commerce facilities are located on Broadway at Rayleigh Road. All visiting seminar attendees, including pedestrians and bike riders, are required to check in at the Visitors Center at the Security Checkpoint to receive a visitor badge. Seminar attendees need to present a valid photo ID and mention the seminar title or the speaker's name to obtain a visitor badge. If security personnel asks for a point of contact please list Julie Singewald (x6074).

If you are a foreign national without permanent residency, please call Julie Singewald at 720-260-4572 (leave a message including your name) or send an e-mail to Julie Singewald at least one day before the seminar if you plan to attend.

Seminars for 2017

Title:

Earth from Space: The Power of Perspective
Speaker: Dr. Waleed Abdalati
Dr. Waleed Abdalati is the Director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado. Prior to joining CIRES, he held various positions at NASA, including that of the NASA chief scientist in 2011 and 2012. His research interests are in the use of satellite and airborne remote sensing techniques, integrated with in situ observations and modeling, to understand how and why the Earth’s glaciers and ice sheets are changing and the implications for sea level rise. During his career, Dr. Abdalati has received over a dozen professional awards from diverse entities such as the White House, NASA, NSF, and the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Date/Time: Friday, January 27, 2017 02:00 PM
Location: DSRC GC402
Abstract
Throughout history, humans have always valued the view from above, seeking high ground to survey the land, find food, assess threats, and understand their immediate environment. The advent of aircraft early in the 20th century took this capability literally to new levels, as aerial photos of farm lands, hazards, military threats, etc. provided new opportunities for security and prosperity. And in 1960, with the launch of the first weather satellite, TIROS, we came to know our world in ways that were not possible before, as we saw the Earth as a system of interacting components. In the decades since, our ability to understand the Earth System and its dynamic components has been transformed profoundly and repeatedly by satellite observations. From examining changes in sea level, to deformation of the Earth surface, to ozone depletion, to the Earth’s energy balance, satellites have helped us understand our changing planet in ways that would not have otherwise been possible. The challenge moving forward is to continue to evolve beyond watching Earth processes unfold and understanding the underlying mechanisms of change, to anticipating future conditions, more comprehensively than we do today, for the benefit of society. The capabilities to do so are well within our reach, and with appropriate investments in observing systems, research, and activities that support translating observations into societal value, we can realize the full potential of this tremendous space-based perspective. Doing so will not just change our views of the Earth, but will improve our relationship with it.

Title:

Climate tipping points, predictability, and the silver lining in a sustainable future
Speaker: Jim White
Jim White is the director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado in Boulder (CU), and the founding director of the Department of Environmental Studies at CU. His two main research areas are paleo-environmental reconstructions from ice cores, and past and modern controls on the carbon cycle. Along with his Danish colleagues, he was among the first to document the astonishing speed and magnitude of abrupt climate changes evident from Greenland ice cores. He is also actively engaged in exploring new paradigms of interdisciplinary education, and is working steadily to better train students in the humanities, journalism, arts and business in the area of sustainability and environmental change.
Date/Time: Thursday, February 23, 2017 02:30 PM
Location: DSRC GC402
Abstract
Climate is changing, forced by higher and higher levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But how will climate change, slowly with time for adaptation, or rapidly with little time to adapt? This talk will look at two aspects of climate change, first we will look at abrupt change, and what we know from ice cores about large, rapid changes in temperature, and secondly, what can we say about the predictability of large, rapid changes? Are such events inherently predicable parts of out climate system, or are they, like volcanic eruptions, largely unpredictable? We will conclude with a look at the ethics of climate change, and what they have to say about possible strategies for mitigating and adapting to a changed world.

Title:

Just what is “G-Rad” and what does it do?
Speaker: Dr. Charles N. Long
Dr. Charles N. Long specializes in the study of clouds and their effect on the surface radiation energy balance of the Earth-atmosphere system. His research interests include observation, quantification, and analyses of the surface radiative energy budget, quantification of cloud macro-physical properties from surface-based measurements, and cloud forcing and feedbacks with respect to surface radiation. He was awarded the Vilho Vaisala Award in Atmospheric Sciences by the WMO in 2000 and 2012, and to date remains the only two-time winner of that award. He is currently a member of the International Radiation Commission (IRC) Global Energy Balance Working Group and the project manager for WMO’s international Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN).
Date/Time: Thursday, March 23, 2017 02:00 PM
Location: David Skaggs Research Center, GC402 (multi-purpose room)
Abstract
Radiation is the primary integrating quantity of climate process and change, bearing the footprint of all changes in atmospheric composition including greenhouse gases, clouds, and aerosols. Among other activities, the GMD Global Radiation (G-Rad) Group operates three networks of surface radiation budget measurement sites, and is the single largest contributing organization to the international WMO Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN). Data at all sites are of the highest quality and are collected continuously at 1-minute temporal resolution which lends itself simultaneously to climatological and trends analysis studies, as well as process studies. Several recent enhancements to the networks improve our ability to diagnose processes that affect the surface radiation budget: 1) the recent availability of cloud properties and cloud radiative effects products derived from the radiation measurements, 2) the expansion of the range over which spectral radiation is measured, and 3) the addition of downward facing instrumentation in this expanded spectral range. These measurements and products provide improved cloud diagnostics, aerosol optical properties, and surface spectral albedo; all significantly increasing the value of the sites beyond that of the primary radiation measurements themselves and enabling the identification of anthropogenic forcers and mechanisms that drive changes in the surface radiation budget. This talk will give a brief overview of these networks, as well as examples of the wide range of analyses and research that the data and products are being used for by the G-Rad Group and the community at large.

Title:

Science, Policy and Diplomacy: The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol

Speaker: Tina Birmpili
Ozone Secretariat of the Montreal Protocol, United Nations Environment
Date/Time: Monday, April 10, 2017 10:00 AM
Location: David Skaggs Research Center, Room 2A305
Abstract
Stories of past success can be empowering and become legends that inspire greater successes in the future. The Montreal Protocol's effort to rid the world of the chemicals that are destroying the earth's protective ozone layer is one such story. Its success in phasing out ozone-depleting substances (ODSs) has inspired a new effort to phase down global warming hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) which resulted in the 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. In the context of global environmental issues, science underpins the global consensus on the need for action. However, sometimes it is difficult to translate science into useful outcomes that policy makers can use when facing urgent and difficult choices at their national levels. Negotiation at the international level may bridge this gap and strengthen the interaction between science and policy making. The United Nations can take on the role of the honest broker that facilitates decision-makers to find policy options along with their implications and agree to a course of action. These choices reflect the complexity and urgency of the real-world problems that science seeks to explain. In the negotiations towards the Kigali Amendment, three new elements have been incorporated in the process of international policy making, first, a non-formal process besides the formal UN one, second, the reframing of the problem in cases where the problem was not clearly understood by all parties or in cases where progress in the discussions could not be made and, third, the importance for parties to feel pride and ownership of the process and the need for engagement and trust in all discussions. As the Executive Secretary of the Ozone Secretariat together with my team, we have overseen the meetings of 197 parties under the Montreal Protocol process, guided and facilitated their continuous negotiations on a large number of issues, and assisted them where possible to reach consensus. My presentation will address the above issues leading up to the Kigali Amendment which will give insights on how science and policy can be bridged through diplomacy.

Title:

The Clean Energy Future is Unstoppable: How We're Getting There
Speaker: Dr. Chuck Kutscher, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Dr. Chuck Kutscher has led research in solar heating and cooling, building energy efficiency, solar industrial process heat, geothermal power, and concentrating solar power. He is an American Solar Energy Society (ASES) Fellow and served as the ASES Chair in 2000-2001. In 2007, he led the ASES study that produced the 200-page report Tackling Climate Change in the U.S., which details how energy efficiency and six renewable energy technologies can dramatically reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 2030. He has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Colorado School of Mines.
Date/Time: Thursday, April 27, 2017 02:00 PM
Location: David Skaggs Research Center, GC402 (multi-purpose room)
Abstract
Chuck Kutscher of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory will describe the progress being made toward a zero-carbon energy future and will highlight some of the positive steps NREL is taking to hasten that transition. Both the supply side and demand side of the energy system are being addressed. A key to success is the movement toward highly energy-efficient, all-electric buildings and urban districts that derive all of their energy from solar, wind, and waste heat. Dr. Kutscher will describe recent successes and the remaining challenges that are being tackled.

Title:

Finnish Meteorological Institute's aerosol observations from the north to the south
Speaker: Dr. Aki Virkkula, Finnish Meteorological Institute
Dr. Aki Virkkula got his MSc degree at Helsinki University of Technology in 1991. In 1992-1996 he was employed by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and in 1996-1999 by the Environment Institute of Joint Reseach Centre, Ispra, Italy. He got his PhD at University of Helsinki (UH) in 1999. In 2001-2002 he was an NRC post-doc at NOAA-PMEL in Seattle. Since 2004 he is a senior scientist at FMI and a docent (adjunct professor) at UH. In 2014-2015 he was a visiting professor at Nanjing University, China. His main research interests have been Antarctic research (4 campaigns, later as a PI), aerosol optics, and effects of BC on snow. He has a wife and two adult kids.
Date/Time: Monday, May 1, 2017 02:00 PM
Location: David Skaggs Research Center, GC402 (multi-purpose room)
Abstract
I will give an overview of Finnish Meteorological Institute's (FMI) aerosol research activities and present two of my own projects, both of which involve also NOAA to some extent. FMI is a research and service agency under the Ministry of Transport and Communications of Finland. It provides various types of meteorological products and information on the atmosphere. The atmospheric composition research unit studies and observes the physical and chemical properties of aerosol particles and trace gases. In the four-year (2013 - 2016) Antarctic project "Atmospheric Composition and Processes relevant to climate change in ANTarctica (ACPANT)" aerosol properties and processes were measured at the Finnish station Aboa and the German Neumayer in Queen Maud Land, at the Italian-French Concordia on the upper plateau, and at the Argentinian Marambio in the Antarctic Peninsula. At Marambio also greenhouse gases were monitored. The focus of the new project "Novel Assessment of Black Carbon in the Eurasian Arctic (NABCEA)" (2016 - 2020) is on BC emitted from flaring associated with oil and gas drilling, shipping, and small-scale wood combustion in the Arctic. The work consists of field measurements, laboratory experiments, and modeling. Atmospheric BC is measured in Finnish Lapland, in Tiksi in the Russian Siberia, and at Cape Baranova on the Bolshevik Island (Severnaja Zemlja). BC will be analyzed from snow samples taken near the sources in Yamal Peninsula and in the background and from ice core samples from Svalbard, and lake sediment samples from Finnish Lapland, Svalbard, and Yamal Peninsula. kled.

Title:

The Power of Long-term Ground-based Downwelling Spectral Infrared Radiance Observations
Speaker: Dr. David Turner, NOAA ESRL's Global Systems Division
Dr. Turner is a meteorologist at NOAA ESRL's Global Systems Division (GSD). He received his BA and MS in mathematics at Eastern Washington University, and his PhD in atmospheric science at the University of Wisconsin Madison (UW). Prior to his position at GSD, he was a research scientist at NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), a professor of Atmospheric Science at UW, and a scientist with DOE's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program at Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL). His research interests include improving radiative transfer models, remote sensing with active and passive sensors, retrieval theory, studying the thermodynamic and dynamic structure of the boundary layer and its evolution, land-atmosphere interactions, and characterizing the properties and processes in mixed-phase clouds.
Date/Time: Friday, June 23, 2017 02:00 PM
Location: David Skaggs Research Center, GC402 (multi-purpose room)
Abstract
Downwelling spectra infrared (IR) radiance observations, such as those made by the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI), contain a wealth of information about the atmosphere. AERI observations for a wide range of applications including: improving infrared radiative transfer models, looking at decadal trends in downwelling IR radiance over the central US, characterization of atmospheric dust layers, thermodynamic profiling and characterizing the evolution of the planetary boundary layer, quantifying the surface radiative forcing of carbon dioxide, and more. This talk will demonstrate the power of these observations, and argue for the need for an extended network of operational AERI instruments.

Title:

Southern Ocean air-sea CO2 exchange inferred from airborne, shipboard, and surface station measurements of atmospheric O2 and CO2
Speaker: Dr. Britton Stephens, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Britton Stephens is a Scientist III in the Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. He received a Bachelor's degree in Earth and Planetary Sciences from Harvard University in 1993 and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1999. Before joining NCAR in 2002, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Carbon Cycle and Greenhouse Gases group. His research has focused on developing and deploying new instruments for tower, ship, and aircraft-based observations of atmospheric O2 and CO2, and on synthesizing data sets and models to elucidate global carbon cycle processes. Britt's carbon-cycle interests span terrestrial ecology, oceanography, atmospheric dynamics, and climate change mitigation.
Date/Time: Thursday, September 21, 2017 02:00 PM
Location: David Skaggs Research Center, GC402 (multi-purpose room)
Abstract
The seasonal exchange of CO2 with the Southern Ocean is driven by strong opposing thermal and biological forces. Climatological air-sea CO2 flux estimates based on temporally and spatially sparse pCO2 measurements in the region predict seasonal exchange in phase with biological forcing but relatively muted in amplitude. In contrast, many Earth system models predict large seasonal cycles in Southern Ocean air-sea CO2 flux, in phase with biological forcing in some models but with opposite phase in others. Because air-sea O2 exchanges are positively correlated for thermal and biological influences, and not affected by buffering chemistry, seasonal air-sea O2 fluxes are considerably larger than their CO2 counterparts. Consequently, atmospheric O2 gradients are relatively unaffected by remote terrestrial and fossil influences and O2 fluxes are more robustly constrained by atmospheric measurements. Estimates of air-sea O2 fluxes validated against atmospheric O2, combined with O2:CO2 ratios in observed atmospheric gradients, can be used to constrain the magnitude and drivers of seasonal CO2 fluxes. I will present results from the O2/N2 Ratio and CO2 Airborne Southern Ocean (ORCAS) Study, which collected extensive measurements of atmospheric O2, CO2, and related species over the Southern Ocean, using the NSF/NCAR Gulfstream V aircraft based out of Punta Arenas, Chile, during January and February 2016. This intensive airborne campaign leverages long-term in situ atmospheric O2 and CO2 measurements made over a latitudinal transect across the Drake Passage on the Antarctic Research and Support Vessel Laurence M. Gould (2012-2017), flask based measurements from Palmer Station Antarctica (PSA) and South Pole (SPO) from the Scripps Oxygen Network (1997-2016), and additional airborne observations from the HIPPO (2009-2011) and ATom (2016-2018) campaigns. Collectively, these measurements show consistently negative correlations between atmospheric O2 and CO2 gradients in both summer and winter, confirming the biological dominance of Southern Ocean seasonal CO2 exchange and allowing rejection of Earth system models that predict air-sea CO2 fluxes with opposite phase to biological forcing, and O2:CO2 ratios that suggest significantly greater seasonal amplitude in air-sea CO2 fluxes than has long been assumed from pCO2 measurements

Title:

Challenges of a sustained climate information system
Speaker: Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research
Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth is a distinguished senior scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. From New Zealand, he obtained his doctorate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been prominent in most of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientific assessments of Climate Change and has also extensively served the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) in numerous ways, most recently as chair of the WCRP Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) project. He has also served on many U.S. national committees. He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. He has published over 547 articles or books and is one of the most cited scientists in his field. He has given many invited scientific talks as well as appearing in a number of television, radio programs and newspaper articles.
Date/Time: Thursday, October 19, 2017 02:00 PM
Location: David Skaggs Research Center, GC402 (multi-purpose room)
Abstract

Observations of planet Earth and all climate system components and forcings are increasingly needed for planning and decisions related to climate services in the broadest sense. Climate change from human activities adds a whole new dimension and an imperative: To acquire climate quality observations and analyze them into products for multiple purposes:

  • diagnostics and empirical studies
  • to inform decisions for mitigation, adaptation
  • assess vulnerability and impacts
  • plan and monitor geo-engineering
  • predict climate variability and change
  • cope with consequences of variability and change.

Challenges in developing a climate information system will be discussed, including making climate observations, new technology, continuity, launch failures; analysis, archive, access, development of climate data records, products, translation into information, assessments of strengths and weaknesses; use in mitigation, adaptation, prediction, climate services, planning and policy; risk management, and responsiveness of users. The U.S. does not have such an end-to-end system. The recent events (hurricanes) will be used as an example of how things can go wrong (in spite of great forecasts) and why the recent disasters are not natural.


Archives