Most Mentioned Topics: Water (109), Aerosol (100), Climate (77), Mantle (67), Ice (66)

Water, aerosol, and climate are the three most widely-used terms in the AGU titles for the Monday morning talks, according to my Word Counter tally.

It’s not just the hydrology talks; water in all its various forms (vapor, ice, liquid) come up in a broad range of contexts (agriculture, clouds, water quality) Topping my list as most interesting: The set of posters exploring connections between hydrology and human health. Who knew researchers were trying to predict cholera outbreaks using remote sensing? 

Aerosols (read this if you’re not familiar with why the small airborne particles matter) are a topic every student of earth science ought to know something about. The particles have become one of the hottest areas of research among scientists as they’re not particularly well-understood, yet have a big impacts on human health and climate. There's a cloud-aerosol session worth swinging by to find out how the problematic particles modify clouds. If I have time, I also plan to stop by a sessions about mineral dust. There’s a lot more dust wafting about in the air than you’d think, and this is your chance to find out what it might mean for the climate.

Most Mentioned Places: California (46), Arctic (35), China (28)
The summer’s CalNex campaign has produced a flood of studies about the Golden State; many of them focus on parsing out the relationship between air quality and climate. The Arctic is another big theme, particularly in a session about the future of polar science. In China, scientists dig deep beneath the continent for clues about the crust in Asia.

The Morning’s Press Conference
New Views of Urban Heat Islands, 11:00h

3 Intriguing Sessions, Oral
Urban Areas and Global Change I, B11J Moscone West: 2008 Monday 0800h

Impacts of Mineral Dust Aerosol on Global and Regional, Climate I, A11K Moscone West: 3004 Monday 0800h


SinoProbe: Deep Exploration in China I, T11F Moscone West: 2016 Monday 0800h

3 Intriguing Poster Topics
Crafty Hydrological Experiments Under Financial Constraints Posters, H11A Moscone South: Poster Hall Monday 0800h

Hydroepidemiology: Understanding Connections Between Hydrology and Human Health I Posters, H11D Moscone South: Poster Hall Monday 0800h

Urban Areas and Global Change I (joint with A, GC, H, PA) C McIntosh, M Beckley
B11J Moscone West: 2008 Monday 0800h

6 Standout Talks/Posters

0800h B11J-01 Contrasts between urban and rural climate under climate change scenarios (Invited): K W Oleson, G B Bonan, J J Feddema

0820h B11J-02 Climate change and heat waves in Paris and London metropolitan areas:

0800h ED11A-0576 POSTER Cellphones as a Distributed Platform for Black Carbon Data Collection N Ramanathan, M Ramana, M L Lukac, P Siva, T Ahmed, A Kar, I Rehman, V Ramanathan;

0800h B11D-0388 POSTER Response of high elevation rocky mountain (Wyoming, USA) forest carbon dioxide and water vapor fluxes to a bark beetle epidemic: J M Frank, W J Massman

0800h B11C-0367 POSTER Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions with agricultural land management changes: What practices hold the best potential?: A J Eagle, L Olander, C W Rice, K Haugen-Kozyra, L R Henry, J S Baker, R B Jackson

Hydrology and Human Health: Predicting Cholera Outbreaks using Remote Sensing Data: A S Jutla, A S Akanda, S Islam 0800h H11D-0830 POSTER (TK)

3 Standout NASA-Related Talks/Posters
0812h GC11A-02 NASA and polar science in the coming decade: T P Wagner, J A Kaye, (NASA HQ)

0854h A11K-05 Response of the water cycle of West Africa and Atlantic to radiative forcing by Saharan dust (Invited): W K Lau, K Kim ; (NASA Goddard)

0800h H11I-0926 POSTER Water Availability in the Tigris-Euphrates River Basin and the Middle East from GRACE: K Voss, J S Famiglietti, M Lo, C de Linage, S C Swenson, M Rodell (NASA JPL)