General Assembly 2014

The SPARC (Stratosphere-troposphere Processes And their Role in Climate) 2014 General Assembly was held on 12-17 January 2014 in Queenstown, New Zealand. It was the fifth gathering of 300 SPARC scientists from around the globe. General Assemblies are opportunities for SPARC to take stock of what has been achieved, where gaps in the portfolio of research undertaken by SPARC need to be filled, and to define where SPARC needs to be moving to remain responsive to the needs of both its members and the users of SPARC research products.

 

Programme and Abstracts


Programme

Handbook distributed to participants including the programme for presentations and poster sessions.

Abstracts

Sunday 12 January

presentations

Monday 13 January

presentations
poster session A

Tuesday 14 January

presentations
poster session B

Wednesday 15 January

presentations
poster session C

Thursday 16 January

presentations
poster session D

Friday 17 January

presentations

Presentations


Sunday 12 January

Theme 6 – Emerging and Outstanding Research of Relevance to SPARC

Gerald Meehl (invited opening lecture)
IPCC AR5: Projections, Predictions and Progress since AR4

Steven Sherwood (invited lecture)
Dynamical Cloud Feedback Mechanism

Ted Shepherd (invited lecture)
Polar Climate Predictability

Christian Jakob (invited lecture)
Long-standing Errors in Climate Model

Dian Seidel (invited lecture)
Temperature Trends: Our Evolving Understanding

Robert Sausen (invited lecture)
Impact of Aviation on Atmospheric Composition and Climate

Monday 13 January

Theme 1 – Atmospheric Chemistry, Aerosols and Climate

John Pyle (SPARC lecture)
Atmospheric Halogens: Model Simulations of VSLS and Long-Lived ODS (presentation to follow)

1-minute POSTER presentations

Christian Jakob (optional lunchtime session)
If only I had more time: Reflections on Tools and Techniques to improve your Productivity

Fiona Tummon
Separating the Influences of Climate and Chemistry on Future Lifetimes of Ozone-depleting Substances: no Indication of much Shortened Lifetime

Ulrike Langematz
Future Arctic Temperature and Ozone: The Role of Anthropogenic Composition Changes

Graeme Stephens (invited lecture)
Cloud/Aerosol Interactions inferred from Satellite Observations

Jason English
Aerosol Size Distributions after Large Volcanic Eruptions evolve in a Complex Manner

Hauke Schmidt (invited lecture)
Stratospheric Implications of Climate Engineering through Solar Radiation Management

Ryan Neely
Recent Anthropogenic Increases in SO2 from Asia have Minimal Impact on Stratospheric Aerosol

William Collins (invited lecture)
Near-term Climate Forcing

Thomas Reichler
Chemical/Dynamical Interactions and Consequences for Climate

Jessica Neu
Ozone Response to Variability in the Stratospheric Circulation: The Role of ENSO and the QBO and Relationship to Long-term Changes (presentation unavailable)

James Keeble
The Impact of Polar Stratospheric Ozone Loss on Southern Hemisphere Stratospheric Circulation and Surface Climate

Li Chao
The Hiatus in Global Surface Warming over 1998-2011 (presentation unavailable)

Tuesday 14 January

Theme 2 – Stratosphere-Troposphere-Ocean Dynamics and Predictability of Regional Climate

Doug Smith (SPARC lecture)
Role of the Stratosphere in Seasonal and Decadal Prediction

1-minute POSTER presentations

Kathy Cooper (optional lunchtime session)
Project Loon: A Stratospheric Platform for Communications and Scientific Discovery (presentation unavailable)

Seok-Woo Son
Interannual Variation of the Antarctic Ozone Hole and its Implication for Seasonal Prediction

Damian Murphy
Inertial Gravity Waves in the Antarctic Stratosphere

Tiffany Shaw (invited lecture)
Dynamical Coupling between the Stratosphere and Troposphere

Mark Baldwin
The Stratospheric Plunger

Ed Gerber (invited lecture)
Understanding and Predicting the Brewer-Dobson Circulation

Amy Butler
Reconsidering the Traditional Definition for Stratospheric Sudden Warmings

Cecilia Bitz (invited lecture)
Fast and Slow Response of Sea Ice and the Southern Ocean to Ozone Depletion

Darryn Waugh
Changes in the Ventilation of the Southern Oceans due to Stratospheric Ozone Depletion

Kirstin Krüger
Do large Tropical Volcanic Eruption influence the SAM?

Kazuaki Nishii
Blockings and Upward Planetary-Wave Propagation into the Stratosphere

Alexey Karpecho
Modeling Tropospheric Impacts of the Arctic Ozone Depletion 2011

Wednesday 15 January

Theme 3 – Coupling to the mesosphere and upper atmosphere

Bernd Funke (invited lecture)
Solar Impacts on Climate

Anne Smith (invited lecture)
Dynamical Coupling between the Middle Atmosphere and Lower Thermosphere

1-minute POSTER presentations

Charles McLandress
Constraining Gravity Wave Drag Parameterizations using a Chemistry Climate Model Nudged to Reanalysis Data (presentation unavailable)

Gloria Manney (invited lecture)
Satellite Observations of Extreme Events in the Polar Middle Atmosphere

Robert Vincent
Studies of Stratospheric Gravity Waves using Superpressure Balloons

Thursday 16 January

Theme 4 – Observational datasets, reanalysis, and attribution studies

Karen Rosenlof (SPARC lecture)
Long-term Changes in Stratospheric Constituents

Richard Stolarski
The Search for Ozone Recovery using 36 Years of SBUV Satellite Data

David Tarasick
A Re-Evaluated Canadian Ozonesonde Record: Changes in the Vertical Distribution of Ozone over Canada from 1966 to 2012

Mark Weber (invited lecture)
Ozone Trends and Variability in a changing Climate

Gilbert Compo (invited lecture)
Developing the 20th Century Reanalysis Version 3 (1850-2013)

Masatomo Fujiwara
Global Response to the Major Volcanic Eruptions in 9 Reanalysis Datasets

Gabriele Stiller
The SPARC Water Vapor Assessment II – Quality Assessment of Water Vapor Data Records from Satellites

David Karoly (invited lecture)
Detection and Attribution Studies of the Role of the Stratosphere in Recent Climate Changes

1-minute POSTER presentations

Friday 17 January

Theme 5 – Tropical processes

Masakazu Taguchi (invited lecture)
Tropical and Extratropical Connections Associated with QBO and ENSO

Ju-Eun Kim
Benefits of a New Wave Scheme for Trajectory Modeling of Stratospheric Water Vapor

Erik Johansson
The Cloud Radiative Heating in the Upper Trosphere Lower Stratosphere over the Indian Subcontinent (presentation unavailable)

Andrew Gettelman (invited lecture)
Representation of Tropical Clouds, Dehydration and the Tropopause Layer in Global Models

Keasava Mohanakumar (invite lecture)
The Relationship of the Asian Summer Monsoon to the Tropical Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere

Stephan Fueglistaler
The Relation between Water entering the Stratosphere and the Strength of the Diabatic Residual Circulation

Felix Bunzel
Long-term Changes in the Brewer-Dobson Circulation: The Role of the Residual Circulation and Mixing

Bernard Legras (invited lecture)
Transport across the TTL

Robyn Schofield
Mass Fluxes and Detrainment Rates over the Maritime Continent: Implications for Stratospheric Composition

Debashis Nath
Decadal Changes in PV Intrusion Events and its Impact on Deep Convection over the Tropics from Climate Change Perspective

Photo gallery

Photos by Geir Braathen and the SPARC Office.

Sponsors

As with previous General Assemblies, we offered financial assistance to support the attendance of PhD students, early career scientists, and scientists from developing countries or countries in transition.

Sponsorship received for the conference was channeled into providing financial support to mitigate registration, travel and accommodation costs for these delegates.

We had four levels of sponsorship for the SPARC 2014 General Assembly:
Platinum       NZ $50,000
Gold              NZ $20,000
Silver            NZ $5,000
Bronze        <NZ $5,000

We are pleased to report that this sponsorship allowed us to provide partial or full funding support to 83 scientists.  This was a significant portion of the attendees at the SPARC 2014 General Assembly, and it was great to be able to facilitate their attendance in this way.  Our sincere thanks go to all of our sponsors.