Speaker: Professor Yuk Yung from CalTech
Title: “Atmospheric Chemical Compounds as Indicators of Air Movements: A Person Perspective and Prospects”
Abstract:
In 1971 James Lovelock (now one of the ~300,000 living centenarians on the planet) wrote a seminal paper entitled, “Atmospheric Fluorine Compounds as Indicators of Air Movements.” He was specifically interested in fluorine compounds, recently discovered by him, whose “distribution in the atmosphere can therefore be a useful indicator of air movements and wind directions.” Nearly half a century later, Lovelock’s vision is more than fulfilled, and not just for fluorine compounds. The field is huge today. I will restrict my talk to what my group has learned from atmospheric distributions of CO, O3 and CO2 about wave breaking, Quasi-biennial Oscillation (QBO), El Nino and Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) and, above all, teleconnection.
The future for this field is as exciting as the seminal vision of James Lovelock half a century earlier. We are now in possession of the global patterns of tracer distributions from recent decades of extensive measurements. We have moved beyond changes in the mean, and are more interested in the spatial and temporal patterns, perturbations, and natural and anthropogenic changes. My prediction is that the synergistic study of atmospheric chemistry, dynamics and climate change will drive the field to new heights in the next half century.
LOCATION:HUCE Seminar Room MCZ 440 STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20191003T160000Z DTEND:20191003T160000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR