Program day 4

Convenors: Delphine Farmer - Colorado State University, USA; Alex Archibald - University of Cambridge, UK

Session description : Advances in understanding changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere and interactions between changing composition and climate. This includes processes governing stratospheric ozone, atmospheric aerosols, and interactions with climate, but not air pollution.

Convenors: Julie Arblaster - Monash University, Australia; Isla Simpson - UCAR, USA; Xiuqun Yang - Nanjing University, China

Session description: Contributions that assess climate and weather changes with an emphasis on understanding the underlying climate physics that generate such events. This covers changes in large scale atmospheric or oceanic circulation, as well as regional/local circulation changes such as storms and eddies.

Convenors: Adriaan Perrels - Finnish Meteorological Institute, Finland; Cocou Jaures Amegnaglo - University of Ghana, Ghana

Session description : Policy dialogue: common space for scientists and policy developers. Science diplomacy for climate action and sustainable development. Future climate scenarios and regional mitigation. Regional forcing, socio-economic drivers of regional climate change. Regional climate responses to mitigation actions (such as negative emissions, carbon dioxide removal (CDR), solar radiation modification (SRM) etc), including quantitative impact analyses. Regional climates and process responses under climate overshoot. Earth system response to strong mitigation with negative emissions. Climate services and systemic change. Informing science-based adaptation strategies.

Convenors: Tufa Dinku - International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), USA; Pablo Borges de Amorim - Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) , Brazil; Amanda Grossi - Columbia Climate School, USA

Session description : Understanding what constitutes good capacity development. Accommodating heterogenous development needs. Developing scientists’ capacity to understand decision context. Developing regionally appropriate good practices guidance. Institutional and individual capacity development. Developing regional research activities for experiential learning. Transdisciplinary collaboration.

Convenors: Helene Seroussi - Dartmouth Engineering, USA; Timothy Naish - Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Session description : Antarctic and Arctic regions
Advances in understanding and modelling atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and terrestrial processes and interactions governing climate variability and change in polar regions. This includes sea-ice and permafrost.

Convenors: Eleanor Blyth - UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, UK; Anna Sörensson - Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), Argentina; Aihui Wang - Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), China

Session description : Processes involving land-air interactions, including the cycling of energy, water, carbon and momentum and boundary-layer dynamics and feedbacks. Four regional themes will be explored: (i) wet-tropical systems including rainfall-recycling and the impact of deforestation, (ii) processes that dominate semi-arid regions including small and large-scale atmospheric response to soil moisture dynamics, (iii) temperate systems including the important of agriculture and forestry on the physical climate system, and (iv) cold climate systems including the importance of snow cover. There will also be a focus on four emerging issues: (a) the role of vegetation and irrigation on monsoon systems, (b) key processes around wetlands, permafrost, peat soils and methane production, (c) understanding the response of ecosystems to slow changes in temperature, water and CO2 levels and (d) a focus on the impact of climate extremes and related phenomena such as fire on the atmosphere land interactions.

Keynote speakers: Francina Dominguez - Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA; Chris Taylor - UKCEH, UK; Dai Yongjiu - School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, China

Convenors: Masa Kageyama - Laboratoire des sciences du climat et l'environnement (IPSL-LSCE), France; Cristiano Chiessi - Universidade de Sao Paolo, Brazil; Kira Rehfeld - Tuebingen university, Germany

Session description : Advances in the evaluation of climate sensitivity, feedbacks and regional climate change based on paleoclimate data. Improving the understanding of climate variability and response to external forcing on different time scales using paleoclimate data. Using paleoclimate modeling and data to improve climate parametrizations.

Keynote speaker: Yassine Ait Brahim - VI Polytechnic University, Morocco

Convenors: Daniela Jacob - Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, Germany; Asunción Lera St.Clair - Digital Assurance Research Center, Norway; Simon Marsland - CSIRO, Australia; Roché Mahon - Caribbean Regional Climate Center, Barbados; Mzime Murisa - START International, Zimbabwe

Session description: Growing climate impacts are leading to an ever-increasing demand for relevant climate knowledge and translation to inform decision and policy contexts. The climate knowledge user community has diverse needs across many different scales and cultures coupled with complexity of power relationships among societies, especially when comparing resource rich and poor nations. The science-policy interface requires transdisciplinary approaches to develop climate services through knowledge codesign, coproduction, and codelivery informing anticipatory adaptation to future challenges. We welcome perspectives on this rapidly developing and important area.

Convenors: Tannecia Stephenson - The University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica; Arona Diedhiou - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), France; Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla - African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Rwanda

Session description : Assessment of climate change at regional level, including regional drivers and response. Focus on changes in dynamics, variability, predictability, and uncertainty. Studies with a focus on Africa are encouraged.

Convenors: Douglas Maraun - University of Graz, Austria; Marjolijn Haasnoot - DELTARES, The Netherlands

Session description : Climate projections are uncertain because of unknown future forcings, model inadequacies and irreducible internal variability. This holds in particular for extreme events, tipping points and more generally low likelihood high impact events. Their occurrence may be plausible, we may even know that they are really possible, and we may have strong evidence that they become more likely with higher global warming. But these events are often not well captured by climate models and the associated uncertainties might be difficult to quantify. Despite uncertainty - or because of uncertainty – considering such events is relevant for adaptation decision making because of the high impacts and potentially transformative adaptation measures which take time to plan and implement. In this session, we aim to discuss uncertainties in climate projections, various approaches used to represent these uncertainties and the relevance and approaches to deal with them in adaptation decision making.

Keynote speakers: Bart van den Hurk - DELTARES, The Netherlands; Amadou Thierno Gaye - Université Cheikh Anta Diop Dakar, Senegal