The Second International Conference on Global Warming and the Next Ice Age begins today in Santa Fe. The conference concludes with a workshop on Aerosols and Climate Prediction Uncertainties.
Conference speakers are expected to present papers on surface, ocean, satellite, and polar climate change observational data, along with presentations on solar variability and cosmic rays, hurricanes and global warning, and the climatic role of aerosols.
Special features of the conference include two sessions of papers on remote sensing in memory of Yoram Kaufman, a senior fellow and senior atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Kaufman died on May 31 after being struck by a car a few days earlier while riding his bicycle in Greenbelt, Md.
A second feature will be a two-day Workshop on Climate Prediction Uncertainties, which will explore aerosol and cloud interactions and feedbacks, aerosol - cloud interactions from space, dust and natural aerosols and aerosols and pollution in megacities.
Speakers today include Chris Folland of the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office and Venkatachalam Ramaswamy, senior scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/Princeton University and one of the lead authors of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Both Folland and Ramaswamy will talk about climate change. Also speaking is Gerald North of Texas A&M University. North was the chair of the National Academies of Science committee that recently released the report, “Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years.”
According to conference organizers, other speakers on Tuesday include Roger Pielke of (Colorado State University) on multi-decadal surface temperature changes; George Kukla (Columbia University) the next Ice Age; William Gray (Colorado State University) on hurricanes and global warming and Jan Veizner (University of Ottawa) on the climate water and carbon cycle.
The conference is sponsored by the Laboratory's Center for Space Science and Exploration, the American Meteorological Society, and the University of Washington. The conference chair is Petr Chylek of ISR-2, while Manvendra Dubey, of EES-HGG (EES-6), is the chair of the workshop.
The conference runs through Friday at the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel. More information about the conference is available at http://aerosols.lanl.gov/conf2006/ online.
