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INSIDE THIS ISSUE
PARTNERSHIPS
ICAS ANNUAL SCIENCE MEETING
OUTREACH
VOLCANO PROVIDES
UNPRECEDENTED RESEARCH
OPPORTUNITY
NEW CENTRE FOR EXPERTISE ON
MODELLING OF THE ATMOSPHERE
AND CLIMATE
NEW DOCTORAL TRAINING
PARTNERSHIP STARTS
PAPERS & PROJECT NEWS
2014 saw the publication of the
Fifth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, with Piers
Forster heavily involved in both
the writing and approval of the
Working Group 1 report on
Physical Climate Change and the
ICAS Newsletter Issue 3 February 2015
Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science SCHOOL OF EARTH AND ENVIRONMENT
www.see.leeds.ac.uk/research/icas/ Twitter@ICASLeeds
Synthesis Report. The
highlight was the 11th hour
approval of Figure 1 from the
Summary for Policy Makers of
the Synthesis report after 4
days (and nights) of tough
negotiations in Copenhagen
(pictured).
PIERS FORSTER ON IPCC
To subscribe: http://lists.leeds.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/icas-newsletter
AWARDS AND RECOGNTION
Cat Scott awarded Springer Thesis Prize 2014
The prize recognises outstanding
PhD theses, chosen for their
scientific excellence and the
impact that the author, as one of
today’s younger generation of
scientists, has on their chosen
research area.
As a result of the award, Cat’s
research is now available to millions
of readers worldwide. Cat’s PhD, on
the biogeochemical impacts of
forests and their implications for
climate change, demonstrates that
forests have a greater impact on
climate than previously thought, due
to the organic molecules which they
produce. Cat used a state-of-the-art
global aerosol microphysics model to
make the first detailed assessment of
the impact of these molecules on
aerosols and Earth’s climate. Her
thesis also discusses what this
means in terms of the impacts that
forests have on climate, finding that
including the climate impacts of
SOAs alongside the carbon cycle
and other influences increases the
total warming effect of global
deforestation by roughly 20%. This is
the second Springer prize won by
ICAS, following Anja Schmidt in 2012
for her PhD on volcanic impacts on
the atmosphere.
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH PROJECT WINS POSTERS IN PARLIAMENT AWARD
Lucinda McGregor, a BSc Meteorology & Climate Science student, presented her research poster in the Houses of Parliament alongside 44 other undergraduate submissions. Lucinda is doing her undergraduate final-year project with Prof Ken Carslaw and PhD student Leighton Regayre.
This vibrant event showcases some
of the best undergraduate research
from selected universities across the
country, with students presenting
research posters to invited guests,
including many MPs, as well as
undergoing a rigorous round of
questions from a judging panel
including Sir Anthony Cleaver (chair
of National Environment Research
Council).
Lucinda’s poster was entitled “The
reliability of cloud representation in
climate models” and compared cloud
cover within climate models to
satellite observations to determine
the accuracy of modelled cloud
representation.
The Posters in Parliament event is
organised as part of the British
Conference of Undergraduate
Research (BCUR) and awards prizes
to the two best posters. This year,
however, the judges awarded a third
prize to Lucinda.
The students spent a lot of time
talking to Greg Mulholland MP, who
visited the exhibition with the whole
event finishing with an evening
reception at Westminster Central
Hall, where Lucinda received her
award.
Lucinda said: "It was a very
enjoyable day, getting to meet
students from universities across the
country, who are all passionate about
what they study and have an active
interest in research. The exhibitions
were very inspirational and getting to
watch a bit of debating in the House
of Commons was great, but the
highlight has got to be meeting Sir
Anthony Cleaver!"
liquid water clouds over a large area
in the North Atlantic thereby affecting
regional climate. The authors
conclude that an unprecedented
opportunity to study aerosol- cloud
interactions could arise if the eruption
were to continue into the boreal
summer.
See photo on last page.
In January 2015 the team went on a
challenging winter expedition to the
eruption site to sample the volcanic
plume (see photos). Anja’s work
shows that air quality was
significantly degraded more than
1500 km away from the volcano in
Ireland and the UK on two occasions
during September 2014.
Published in Nature Geoscience, the
team from NCAR, Leeds and Oslo
Universities demonstrated that the
sulfur emitted at Nornahraun could
result in much brighter low-level
In the early hours of 31 August 2014, the spectacular Nornahraun fissure eruption began at the Holuhraun lava field in Iceland about 45 km away from Bárðarbunga central volcano. The eruption presented an unprecedented opportunity for Anja Schmidt to study the environmental effects of a large-scale Icelandic flood lava eruption.
During early September 2014, the
powerful lava-producing eruption was
characterized by 100-m-high fire
fountains along a 1.5-km-long
fissure.
The average lava discharge rate
during September 2014 is estimated
at 200 m3/s, which is equivalent to
filling five Olympic-sized swimming
pools with lava each minute. The
eruption produced very little volcanic
ash, and by mid-September 2014,
activity gradually became limited to
four craters forming a 400-m-long
lava pond (see photo). By February
2015, the eruption produced a total
lava volume of more than 1.4 km3
making it the first flood lava since the
Laki eruption in 1783.
For more than 150 days the
Nornahraun eruption has emitted on
average 35 kilotons of sulfur dioxide
(SO2) per day into the atmosphere;
almost three times the total daily
anthropogenic SO2 emissions from
the European Union in 2010.
In ICAS, Anja Schmidt is
investigating the long-range transport
of sulfur from Nornahraun and its
effects on air quality and climate
together with colleagues across the
UK, at the UK Met Office, at NCAR
and in Iceland.
Anja is also the Leeds PI on a NERC
urgency grant led by the British
Geological Survey (Evgenia
Ilyinskaya) characterising the source
of the sulfur emitted at Nornahraun.
ICELANDIC VOLCANO PROVIDES UNPRECEDENTED RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY
Setting up filter packs and pumps to sample gases and aerosol particles in the Nornahraun volcanic plume. Photo by Anja Schmidt taken on 22 January 2015.
AWARDS AND RECOGNTION
Jo Browse - IASC Fellow for the
Atmosphere Working Group
The International Arctic Science
Committee (IASC) is a non-
governmental, international
scientific organization that
encourages and facilitates
cooperation in all aspects of Arctic
research. The IASC Fellowship
Program is a mechanism to
engage early career scientists in
the work of the IASC Working
Groups (WGs). IASC Fellows are
expected to scientifically contribute
and to help organize specific
activities. Fellows are involved in
leading-edge scientific activities at
a circumarctic and international
level, to build an international
network of contacts and also to
develop management skills. IASC
supports one Fellow per WG for a
period of one year.
composition, weather, climate,
climate impacts and palaeoclimate,
and there are plans to extend into ice
sheet modelling. ICAS is also a
leading UK centre for the use of the
Met Office Unified Model in almost all
its configurations, ranging from
scales of hundreds of metres to the
global scale.
CEMAC also has ambitious plans to
transform how ICAS’s research feeds
into teaching. We aim to enhance the
student experience by providing
expertise to enable students to do
research with our models and to
benefit from new techniques to
visualise and explore model and
observation data.
For further information about
computer modelling in ICAS visit
http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/research/
ICAS/facilities/computer-modelling.
The School of Earth and Environment has given the go-ahead for a major new initiative to support the extensive numerical modelling research in ICAS. Up to seven new posts will be created with the aim of transforming ICAS’s capability to develop and apply complex climate and atmosphere models, and to manage the increasingly large model and observation datasets associated with them.
CEMAC is a joint initiative with the
National Centre for Atmospheric
Science (NCAS) and will be closely
linked to the Met Office through the
formal Academic Partnership.
Computer modelling is a major
scientific activity in ICAS and is also
central to how we exploit our field
and laboratory research. The
research of 18 academic staff is
primarily model-based. In the period
2008-2013 model-based research
attracted £25 million grant income,
enabling more than 340 publications.
ICAS’s continued growth (from 4
academic staff in 1999 to 30 today)
has led to a rapid increase in the
range and complexity of models used
by staff, postdocs and PhD students.
Our major models cover atmospheric
ICAS TO CREATE A WORLD-LEADING CENTRE FOR EXPERTISE ON MODELLING OF THE ATMOSPHERE AND CLIMATE
DOCTORAL TRAINING PARTNERSHIP APPOINTS FIRST PHD STUDENTS
NINETY PERCENT
OF OUR
RESEARCH
JUDGED WORLD
LEADING OR
INTERNATIONALLY
EXCELLENT
The results of the national Research
Excellence Framework exercise
have now been published and we
are delighted to announce that the
School of Earth and Environment
has been ranked 5th out of 44
departments in the UK for overall
research quality in Earth systems
and environmental sciences. The
Research Excellence Framework is
a national assessment of the quality
of research in UK Higher Education
Institutions, undertaken every six
years.
This result represents a major
improvement compared to our
position of 12th in the 2008
Research Assessment Exercise, and
demonstrates our status as a world-
leader in research across a broad
spectrum of the Earth and
environmental sciences. 90% of our
research has reached world leading
and internationally excellent
standards based on overall quality.
The quality of our research
environment has also been rated
within the top 2 in the UK, reflecting
our culture of supporting both new
and experienced researchers as well
as major investments in
infrastructure and facilities, including
£23.5M on a state-of-the-art building
for Earth and environmental
research.
Staff within ICAS are leading a NERC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) called SPHERES – Site for PhD Training in Environmental Research. The Leeds DTP recruited its first students in October 2014.
In 2012 NERC reorganised its award
of PhD studentships to improve the
training and research environment for
all students, and the result was the
creation of fifteen DTPs across the
UK.
The SPHERES DTP is a
collaboration between the five
departments in Leeds with NERC-
facing research (Schools of Earth and
Environment, Geography, Chemistry,
Biology and Maths) and the
atmospheric scientists in the nearby
Department of Chemistry at York. In
contrast to many others, our DTP is
largely a ‘single-site’ one and
students can easily come together for
training and research events. Our
PhD projects span the full range of
NERC research excellence that
occurs in these departments.
Naturally, there is a strong
representation of atmospheric
science not only in ICAS but also in
Leeds Chemistry, Geography and
Maths and York Chemistry.
Our NERC funding is boosted by co-
funding from the universities and
departments. We provide up to 28
fully funded PhD places per year.
Importantly, because of this co-
funding, we are able to offer several
fully funded studentships to EU
students. SEE, as the largest NERC-
facing department, is the largest
recruiter within the DTP and within
that a significant number of students
are based in ICAS. Many external
partner organisations, such as the
Met Office provide additional ‘CASE’
support for our DTP students.
The director of the DTP is ICAS’s
Martyn Chipperfield. In September
2014 Nigel Richards, who has
worked for ICAS and NERC NCEO
on satellite observations of
atmospheric chemistry, was
appointed the DTP’s dedicated
trainer and administrator. For further
information please contact them or
consult our http://
www.nercdtp.leeds.ac.uk/
ICAS PARTNERSHIPS
THE MET OFFICE ACADEMIC PARTNERSHIP
The Partnership continues to be
an active part of the life of ICAS,
influencing a large fraction of our
research activities, and enhancing
teaching.
Our new partnership research
fellow, Steven Boeing, started in
Leeds on 1 February 2015, to work
on the dynamics of deep convection.
Claire Witham (Met Office
Atmospheric Dispersion Group
leader) spent a week in ICAS on a
partnership secondment, hosted by
Anja Schmidt. The ongoing
collaboration is aimed at advancing
our joint research on volcanic plume
dispersal.
Climate Services: There was a
cross Research Advisory Panel
meeting on climate services with the
Met Office and Leeds in Oxford at the
end of September 2014. Possible
coordination of work on climate
services and risks across the Met
Office Academic Partnership was
discussed, including future work on
weather-related hazards and analysis
of adaptation decision-making.
Alan Haywood and Julia Tindall
have received £75,000 as part of the
CSSP scheme to continue the
inclusion of stable water isotopes
within the UK Earth System Model
(UKESM1).
Juliane Schwendike, John
Marsham and Dan Grosvenor will
work with a PDRA from January until
March on a China CSSP
collaboration analysing model
NEW PARTNERSHIP WITH THE KARLSRUHE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
A Memorandum of Understanding
has been signed between
Karlsruhe institute of Technology
(KIT, Germany) to formalise a
partnership that will foster and
facilitate collaboration.
The collaboration will build on current
and past successes:
- Joint projects, particularly those
funded by the European Union or
other international funding bodies;
- Joint international field or laboratory
experiments;
- Joint model development or model
intercomparison exercises;
- Exchange of students (particularly
PhD, but also BSc/MSc) and
researchers at all career stages.
The formal partnership builds on a
history of successful projects (e.g.
CSIP, AMMA, COPS) and ongoing
projects (e.g. DACCIWA, BACCHUS,
Desert Storms, StratoClim) across an
extraordinarily broad range of
science areas including atmospheric
chemistry, aerosols, cloud physics,
climate, planetary boundary layer
processes, dynamics, convection,
land-surface processes and
biosphere-atmosphere interactions.
John Marsham (ICAS) and Peter
Knippertz and Christian Barthlott
(KIT) are the designated contacts for
each institution. If you have questions
regarding the partnership, e.g. about
the possibility of visiting KIT, contact
them in the
first instance
(discussing
with your
supervisor as
appropriate).
convection over China.
Sebastien Nobert and Suraje
Dessai (in SRI) won support for
research in China into Mapping
Climate Services and Needs.
New CASE and Met Office staff
studentships, October 2014
CASE students undertake their PhDs
in cooperation with non-academic
institutions. Three new students have
begun Met Office CASE PhDs in
ICAS. Oliver Halliday (Storms,
water and atmospheric dynamics
supervised by Prof Doug Parker, Dr
Stephen Griffiths in Maths and Dr
Simon Vosper; Hannah Pearce
(Nitrate aerosol: implications for
European climate and air quality
supervised by Dr Graham Mann, Dr
Steve Arnold and Dr Fiona
O’Connor; and Matt Clark (Fine-
scale observations and modelling of
convective systems in the UK
supervised by Prof Doug Parker and
Prof Chris Collier)
CENTRE FOR POLAR OBSERVATION AND MODELLING
The Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) is a collaborative research centre studying processes occurring at polar latitudes that affect Earth's albedo, ocean and atmosphere circulation, and sea level. CPOM develops satellite observations of land and marine ice fluxes and of polar ocean circulation, and combines these measurements with theoretical understanding to improve models of how Earth’s ice, oceans and atmosphere interact. NERC has supported CPOM since 2000 to provide UK national capability in the field of cryospheric Earth observation and modelling.
CPOM is led from ICAS by Andy
Shepherd and Mal McMillan is the
CPOM research scientist, and
includes partners at University
College London with expertise in
satellite altimetry, at the University of
Bristol with expertise in ice sheet
modelling, and at the University of
Reading with expertise in sea ice
modelling. Around one third of
CPOM’s £1.5 million annual budget
is provided by NERC to maintain its
national capability role, and the
remainder comes from other sources
including the European Space
Agency (ESA) and the European
Commission.
Together with the British Antarctic
Survey (BAS) and the National
Oceanographic Centre (NOC),
CPOM addresses the scientific
challenges of Arctic climate change
and global sea level rise – issues of
broad societal concern. This includes
providing data sets that are used to
test global climate model predictions,
in partnership with the UK Met Office,
and to inform assessments of global
climate change, in support of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, and developing and
maintaining state of the art numerical
models of land and sea ice. CPOM
also works closely with space
agencies to exploit satellite datasets
and mission opportunities, and
provides scientific and technical
leadership for the European Space
Agency’s CryoSat-2 mission.
CryoSat-2 is the European Space
Agency’s first satellite mission
dedicated to surveying polar regions.
An important element of CPOM’s role
is to provide scientific and technical
support for CryoSat-2, and Andy
Shepherd is the Principal Scientific
Advisor to the mission.
Over the years, CPOM has made
important technical and scientific
advances. Highlights include
producing the first space borne
observations of sea ice thickness and
volume, the first assessments of
Antarctic ice sheet thickness and
volume change, the discovery of
widespread ice dynamical imbalance
in the Amundsen Sea sector of West
Antarctica, and the discovery of rapid
water transfer between lakes situated
ICAS PARTNERSHIPS
at the base of the Antarctic ice
sheet. CPOM has also been
instrumental in the development of
the GLIMMER, BISICLES, and CICE
community ice sheet and sea ice
models that form the basis of future
climate projections, and in
establishing the Ice Sheet Mass
Balance Inter-comparison Exercise
which, in 2012, delivered the first
community assessment of the sea
level contribution due to ice losses
from Greenland and Antarctica.
Image: The image shows the rate of ice cap elevation change between 2010 and 2014 observed by the CryoSat satel-lite, which is overlaid onto an image acquired by the Sentinel-1A satellite. Red regions show where the ice surface has low-ered due to ice loss. Image credit: CPOM/GRL
NATIONAL CENTRE FOR ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE
Staff in the National Centre for
Atmospheric Science (NCAS) are
an integral part of ICAS’s
research.
Barbara Brooks, Head of the NCAS
Atmospheric Measuring Facility
(AMF), was involved in the 2014
Arctic Cloud Summer Experiment
(ACSE) project cruise. She was
responsible for deploying and
running several AMF instruments
including a scanning microwave
radiometer and a Doppler lidar - see
photo.
Kate Faloon, Barbara Brooks,
James Groves and Dan Walker
have developed a field site in
collaboration with the Icelandic
Meteorological Office with several
cameras, a weather station, lidar and
lidar ceilometer. The IMO mobile X-
band radar is at the same site. Data
are streamed live to the AMF
website. Please see: https://
www.ncas.ac.uk/index.php/en/about-
iao. NCAS also organised an Ash
workshop that brings together the
operational and academic community
to address the problem of real time
retrievals applicable to the accurate
forecasting of ash, its position and
possible size concentration.
Construction of the "Summit
Polarized Raman Lidar” (SuPR lidar)
has now begun in earnest supervised
by the new joint NCAS-ICAS scientist
Ryan Neely and deployment in
Greenland has been scheduled for
2016. Refurbishment of the "Cloud,
Aerosol Polarization and Backscatter
Lidar" (CAPABL) has also started
and the new data acquisition system
has shown the ability to detect
horizontally oriented ice crystals.
Deployment to Summit Greenland is
scheduled for April 2015.
The NCAS radar has been deployed
to Braunschweig airport, Germany as
part of the Single European Sky Air
Traffic Management Research
(SESAR) project to automate air
traffic control. The idea is to provide
suitable meteorological products
from all kinds of sensors present at
the airport, such as wind shear and
surface temperature. The NCAS
radar scientist Lindsay Bennett is
supervising the UK part of the project
and Ralph Burton is running the
WRF model for the experimental
domain.
Analysis of results from the WISER
project (Weather climate change
Impact Study at Extreme Resolution)
has been started by Alan Gadian to
examine the extremes in the tail of
the precipitation pdf and is providing
input to the European Flood Model.
The project will involve collaboration
with the US National Centre for
Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The development of the GLOMAP
aerosol model in the UK’s Unified
Model (UM), led by Graham Mann
and Ken Carslaw, has reached
some important milestones towards
the creation of the new UK Earth
System Model (UKESM). Interactive
stratospheric aerosol has been
developed, leading to some
important new findings about the
effects of the Pinatubo eruption in
1991, published by Dhomse et al.
(2014). GLOMAP has also been
accepted into the latest Global
Atmosphere configuration (GA7) of
the UM, following intensive
collaboration between Met Office,
Leeds, Cambridge, Oxford and
Reading.
A significant piece of work has been
undertaken to examine the causes of
the Boltby dam flooding event in the
summer of 2005 by Ralph Burton,
Alan Gadian and Chris Collier.
This is an important application of
understanding the physical
processes in convective precipitation.
Dam over-topping is considered to
be a potential hazard that is of
interest to the Natural Hazards
Partnership. The results may feed
into hazard risk models.
ICAS PARTNERSHIPS
NCAS scientists at Leeds on field deployment on
the ACSE cruise. Photo: Barbara Brooks
NATIONAL CENTRE FOR EARTH OBSERVATION
ICAS researchers are part of the
National Centre for Earth
Observation (NCEO), a distributed
NERC centre. NCEO was formed
in 2008 to promote the use of
Earth observation data among
NERC researchers. NERC has
invested £23M in NCEO over the
next 5 years. Martyn Chipperfield
is an NCEO Principal Investigator.
In the first phase of NCEO, before it
was separated into atmosphere,
cryosphere (now CPOM) and solid
Earth, two ICAS staff were NCEO
Principal Investigators: Martyn
Chipperfield for Atmospheric
Composition and Andy Shepherd for
the Cryosphere. During this time the
NCEO research fellows Dr Nigel
Richards and Dr Mal Macmillan
conducted research into tropospheric
chemistry and the ice sheets,
respectively.
Many past and present PhD students
also had had projects funded by, or
linked to, NCEO activities, including
Amber Leeson (ice sheet modelling),
Richard Pope (air quality) and Joey
McNorton (land-atmosphere CH4
fluxes).
ICAS atmospheric composition
research in NCEO focusses on two
activities: (i) Inverse modelling and
data assimilation and (ii) using EO
data to test atmospheric models.
The new NCEO Research Fellow,
Chris Wilson, has developed the
inverse version of our TOMCAT 3-D
chemical transport model (CTM).
This allows the model to be run
backwards in time so that we can
use atmospheric observations to
derive the emissions of important
greenhouse gases such as CH4 and
CO2 (see Figure 1).
We are now entering an era of
unprecedented coverage of carbon
gases from space with the launch of
satellites such as GOSAT and OCO-
2. Inverse modelling will play a key
role in determining the surface
sources and sinks of these species.
From April 2015 an additional ICAS
NCEO post will work on the testing
the atmospheric chemistry in the new
UK Earth System Model (UKESM1).
ICAS ANNUAL SCIENCE MEETING 2014
Our annual science meeting in
November 2014 at the Queens Hotel
in Leeds was a huge success. About
90 members of staff, postdocs and
PhD students took part, with the day
organised around the three ICAS
research themes: Composition,
Climate and Weather. Our invited
guests this year, to launch our new
Partnership, were Christoph
Kottmeier and Bernhard Vogel from
the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
There were 115 posters presented
and the buzz around the poster
sessions was, to quote one member
of staff’s tweet, like AGU. We
finished the day with dinner and prize
giving, with the highly deserving
winners being:
Award for most significant
scientific advance or discovery by
a PhD student: Winner: Tom
Richardson (2nd year PhD) for
“Understanding the rapid
precipitation response to CO2 and
aerosol forcing on a regional scale”.
Award for most significant
scientific advance or discovery by
an early career researcher: Winner:
Amber Leeson for “Greenland’s
supraglacial lakes advance inland
under warming climate”. Runner up:
Lindsay Lee for “How can CCN
observations contribute to model
uncertainty reduction?”
Award for outstanding research by
a PhD student supported by the
Met Office: Winner: Leighton
Regayre for “Mission: Uncertainty
Quantification. Target: Aerosol
Radiative Forcing”. Runner up:
Steven Turnock for “Changes in
European Aerosols from
Observations and a Global Chemistry
Climate Model”
Award for outstanding scientific
communication: Winner: Tom
Richardson (2nd year PhD). Runner
up: His supervisor… Piers Forster
ICAS PARTNERSHIPS
Image: Surface flux of CH4 (x1012 molecules cm-2 s-1) into the atmosphere from South America in August 2010 before (left) and after (centre) the TOMCAT model has been used to assimilate in-situ and satellite observations of atmospheric CH4 concentrations.
Image 3: BBC Operation Cloud
Lab – Photo Credit: BBC Pictures
ICAS Making a Buzz in the Media
ICAS is a world-leading atmospheric
research institute and the global me-
dia coverage of our research reflects
this. Jim McQuaid’s was a presenter
and science advisor on the BBC’s
Operation Cloud Lab (Image 3) and
Wild Weather with Richard Ham-
mond. Steve Arnold was a guest on
the red sofa for a Look North inter-
view about air pollution and Doug
Parker was interviewed by Sky News
regarding the poor weather and
flooding experienced at the start of
2014. Paul Hudson has hosted a
number of ICAS researchers as part
of his BBC Radio York Weather
Show. In 2014, Jim McQuaid, Anja
Schmidt and Cat Scott have all visit-
ed the station to chat about a variety
of topics such as volcanic eruptions
and air quality.
To read more visit http://
mediacuttings.leeds.ac.uk/
IntheNews/index.aspx and select
ICAS from the drop-down menu.
KS3 and KS4 students.
CAST: Flying around Storms in
the Tropics -Royal Society
Summer Science Exhibition – June
2014 (Image 2)
Hannah joined the Coordinated
Airborne Studies in the Tropics
(CAST) team at the Royal Society’s
Summer Science Exhibition to talk to
the public and Royal Society Fellows
about the recent field campaign in
Guam.
Science Fair - Saltaire Festival –
September 2014
Lindsay Bennett showed that all the
best meteorology experiments go
“Bang!” with the loudest stall at the
Science Fair, organised by Kirsty
Pringle and Tay-Yibah Aziz (STEM
Public Engagement Intern). Jim
McQuaid talked about how clouds
form and showcased his work with
the BBC’s Operation Cloud Lab.
Hannah Price used her turbo power
experiment to demonstrate how
water power can be used to generate
electricity.
OUTREACH
ICAS has always been actively
involved in scientific outreach by
participating in the Leeds Festival
of Science, contributing to
external events and hosting
standalone activities. By
interacting with the public and
students, we aim to spark interest
in atmospheric science and
inspire students to pursue a STEM
career. Here are some recent
highlights. For more information,
look out for the new Outreach
page on the ICAS website.
Outreach Activities in 2014
Campus and Roadshow
Activities – University of Leeds
Festival of Science - April 2014
(Image 1)
Lindsay Bennett (NCAS and ICAS),
Victoria Smith (NCAS and ICAS) and
Matt Amison ran an interactive
“Weather Workshop” for high school
students. Hannah Price developed a
session titled “Super Cool Clouds”
looking at supercooled water and ice
nucleation and Hannah Mantle
created a roadshow session, “The
Business of Climate Change”, for
Image 1: Matt Amison, Tor Smith, Lindsay Bennett and high school stu-
dents – Weather Workshop. Photo credit: Lindsay Bennett (NCAS/SEE).
OUTREACH
Image 2: CAST Royal Society
Summer Science Festival 2014.
Photo Credit: Doug Anderson
(FAAM)
Upcoming Events:
World Meteorological Day – We Need You!
World Meteorological Day –
23rd/24th/25th March 2015
To celebrate World Meteorological
Day, Hannah Mantle and Jim
McQuaid are hosting a three day
event in the department titled
‘Weather and Water: Demisting the
Science of our Atmosphere’. KS3
students will be invited to participate
in demonstrations investigating the
many processes involved in the crea-
tion of our weather and attend a talk
given by Jim on his Cloud Lab work.
We need volunteers to help support
the event so if you’d like to be in-
volved, please email Hannah
Did You Know?
ICAS has two Education Outreach
Fellows in the department: Hannah
Mantle and Hannah Price. Cecilia
Ixchel de Ita and Simon Manda (both
SRI) have recently joined the team as
new Earth and Environment Educa-
tion Outreach Fellows. Pre Carbo is
our Schools Engagement Officer.
Get Involved!
If you’d like to be involved in ICAS
outreach please email Pre Carbo
([email protected]) for more in-
formation
.
AWARDS AND RECOGNTION
Cathryn Birch awarded GEWEX
outstanding presentation by an
early career scientist at the 7th
International Scientific
Conference on the Global Water
and Energy Cycle.
Cathryn is a Met Office Research
Scientist based in ICAS. Her work
uses a novel high-resolution
modelling approach to better
understand monsoon circulations.
Cathryn has also won the European
Meteorological Society (EMS) Young
Scientist Award for 2014. The award
is given to individuals in recognition
of excellent performance in terms of
scientific publications or
presentations during the early stage
of their scientific career. She earned
the award for scientific work that
brings together models and
observations to quantify the
processes leading to major biases in
weather and climate models.
Cathryn collected her award and
presented an invited talk at the EMS
conference in Prague in October.
Erin Dawkins awarded the IAGA
Young Scientist Award.
PhD student Erin Dawkins has won
the International Association of
Geomagnetism and Aeronomy
(IAGA) Young Scientist Award for
2015. Erin was nominated for her
research on upper atmosphere
metal layers. The award recognizes
excellent and promising young
scientists whose research,
presentation and overall
performance at the topical meeting
meet high international standards
and represent big potential for the
future of IAGA .
Stratospheric ozone depletion has
been one of the major
environmental issues of the past
few decades. A thinner ozone
layer allows more damaging
ultraviolet radiation to reach the
Earth’s surface and also changes
the atmospheric radiation balance.
In particular, ozone depletion in
the lower stratosphere can exert
an important climate forcing. Two
recent papers from ICAS, in
Nature and Nature Geoscience,
have shed new light on the causes
and impact of stratospheric ozone
loss.
Since the 1960s or so, the ozone
layer has been depleted through
human use of chlorine and bromine-
containing compounds such as
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The
most dramatic manifestation of this
depletion is the Antarctic Ozone Hole
which started to appear in the early
1980s. CFCs, and similar gases, are
stable species with long atmospheric
lifetimes (many decades) and, as a
result, can be transported to the
stratosphere where they release Cl
and Br atoms which can destroy O3.
Fortunately, most of the Cl released
in this way is normally tied up in the
reservoir species HCl, which
therefore acts as a marker of the
stratospheric chlorine loading.
Concern over ozone depletion led to
the signing of the Montreal Protocol
in 1987. Following various
amendments, this protocol has led to
the phasing out of many classes of
known, long-lived ozone-destroying
compounds. Therefore, the chlorine
(and bromine) content of the
atmosphere is decreasing, but at a
slow rate. Models indicate that
atmospheric chlorine loading should
return to 1980 (i.e. pre Ozone Hole)
values by about 2050.
However, recent ground-based
Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR)
observations of stratospheric HCl in
the northern hemisphere have
revealed that the expected decrease
reversed around 2007 (Figure 1).
HCl has since shown an upward
trend for a number of years. This
turnaround was confirmed by satellite
observations from the Atmospheric
Chemistry Explorer (ACE). These
observations could potentially mean
that new, unknown sources of
chlorine are reaching the
stratosphere and that the Montreal
Protocol is failing in its aim to protect
the ozone layer.
Within ICAS we collaborated with the
observation groups worldwide in
order to understand these
unexpected variations in HCl and the
work has recently been published in
Nature (Mahieu et al., 2014). Using
the TOMCAT/SLIMCAT off-line 3-D
chemical transport model, we were
able to explain this as a transient
increase in column HCl due to
variability in stratospheric circulation.
After 2007 a slightly slower
circulation has allowed more of the
CFC source gas to be converted to
HCl, even though the chlorine
content of air in the stratosphere is
still decreasing. This long-term,
organised variability in the
stratospheric circulation is in itself
interesting, but the most important
conclusion, which made it of interest
to Nature’s general readership, is
that the Montreal Protocol is still
leading to a decrease in chlorine and
is thus still on course to protect the
ozone layer. Being able to interpret
the observations with a model like
TOMCAT was key to the conclusions
of the paper.
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
Stratospheric Halogens and the Montreal Protocol
Ryan Hossaini and Martyn Chipperfield (Nature Geoscience, 2015)
Figure 1. Evolution of hydrogen chloride (HCl) in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Panel (a) shows the long-term total column time series of HCl at Jungfraujoch
station (running average; in red, left scale) and the global total tropospheric
chlorine mixing ratio (blue curve, right scale). Lower panels display the running
average total column time series (1997-2011) of HCl at Ny-Ålesund (b), Jung-
fraujoch (c) and Lauder stations (d), derived from the FTIR observations, the
standard (green) and S2000 (with repeating meteorology, yellow) SLIMCAT
model simulations. The thin red lines correspond to the ±2 standard error of
the mean range. Minimum columns are observed in July-2007 at the northern
hemisphere sites (dashed lines). From Mahieu et al. (2014).
Some related work on shorter-lived
halogenated species is currently in
press in Nature Geosciences
(Hossaini et al., 2015). This paper
studied the impact of so-called very
short-lived substances (VSLS) on
ozone and climate. These
compounds contain bromine, chlorine
and iodine and have atmospheric
lifetimes of 6 months or less. As a
consequence not all VSLS will reach
the stratosphere, but the ones that do
decompose readily and destroy
ozone in the lowermost part, where
ozone perturbations have a
particularly large climate impact
(Figure 2a). In the Nature
Geoscience paper we showed that
the climate impact due to ozone loss
from VSLS is about 4 times greater
than that from the longer lived
halocarbons, such as CFCs.
Many VSLS are emitted naturally, for
example bromoform and
dibromomethane from the ocean.
However, our paper also reports a
large increase in the atmospheric
abundance of dichloromethane,
which has mainly anthropogenic
sources (Figure 2b). This gas is not
controlled by the Montreal Protocol
and its growth appears to be
accelerating. Although it is present in
relatively small amounts at the
moment, these industrial sources are
not understood and will likely
increase further if growth is due to
the industrialization of developing
nations. This species and other VSLS
need to be carefully monitored in
coming years and there is likely to be
moves to include some VSLS in
future amendments to the Montreal
Protocol.
References (ICAS staff in bold)
R. Hossaini, M. P. Chipperfield, S.
A. Montzka, A. Rap, S. Dhomse and
W. Feng, Efficiency of short-lived
halogens at influencing climate
through depletion of stratospheric
ozone, Nature Geoscience,
doi:10.1038/ngeo2363 (2015)
Mahieu, E., M.P. Chipperfield, J.
Notholt, T. Reddmann, J. Anderson,
P.F. Bernath, T. Blumenstock, M.T.
Coffey, S. Dhomse, W. Feng, B.
Franco, L. Froidevaux, D.W.T.
Griffith, J. Hannigan, F. Hase, R.
Hossaini, et al., Recent northern
hemisphere hydrogen chloride
increase due to atmospheric
circulation change, Nature, 515, 104-
107, doi:10.1038/nature13857, 2014.
Figure 2. Ozone loss due to VSLS
and growth in atmospheric CH2Cl2.
Panel (a) shows the simulated global
average decrease in ozone volume
mixing ratio (parts per billion, ppb)
due to all halogenated VSLS in 2011.
The grated area denotes the range
due to uncertainty in the stratospher-
ic abundance of VSLS. For compari-
son, the ozone decrease due to all
halogenated long-lived ozone-
depleting substances (e.g. CFCs) is
also shown. VSLS are efficient at
destroying ozone in the climate-
sensitive lower stratosphere. Panel
(b) shows the observed monthly
mean trend in CH2Cl2 mixing ratio
(ppt) from a global ground-based
monitoring network. The 2000-2012
mean growth rates (%/yr, annotated)
reveal rapid CH2Cl2 growth over the
last decade, particularly in the indus-
trialised northern hemisphere. From
Hossaini et al. (2015).
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
Other notable publications
PhD study selected as one of the
highlights of the UK SOLAS sci-
ence programme. This is the first
study to have mapped the global
distribution of whitecaps, which are
important for the production of sea
spray aerosol (Salisbury, D. J., M.
Anguelova, and I. M. Brooks: Global
Distribution and Seasonal Changes
in Satellite-based Whitecap Fraction
Estimates, Geophys. Res. Letts., 41,
2014)
The slowdown in global tempera-
ture trends: No systematic error in
climate models. Marotzke, J., and
P.M. Forster, Forcing, feedback, and
internal variability in global tempera-
ture trends. Nature, 2015.
Migrating ‘supraglacial’ lakes
could trigger future Greenland ice
loss. Leeson, A.A., A. Shepherd, K.
Briggs, I. Howat, X. Fettweis, M.
Morlighem, E. Rignot, Supraglacial
lakes on the Greenland ice sheet
advance inland under warming cli-
mate. Nature Climate Change, 5, 51
–55, 2015.
Where to find pristine aerosol en-
vironments on our polluted planet.
It is essential to understand pristine
environments because they signifi-
cantly affect how much radiative
forcing we calculate relative to pre-
industrial conditions (Hamilton, D.S.,
Lee, L.A., Pringle, K.J., Reddington,
C.L., Spracklen, D.V. Carslaw, K.S.
Occurrence of pristine aerosol envi-
ronments on a polluted planet, Pro-
ceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 111, 18466-18471 (2014).
ERC Consolidator success for Ben Murray
The highly competitive European
Research Council Consolidator 5-
year Grants aim to strengthen
independent and excellent research
teams across Europe. Ben Murray
has had outstanding success in the
ERC, having already completed an
ERC Starting Grant. His new €2M
grant will enable significant new
innovations in the field of ice
nucleation and atmospheric effects.
The formation of ice in clouds is
fundamentally important to life on our
planet since clouds play a key role in
climate and the hydrological cycle.
Despite the significance of ice
formation, our quantitative
understanding of sources, properties,
mode of action and transport of Ice-
Nucleating Particles (INP) is poor. In
order to improve our representation
of clouds in models we need to
understand the ice-nucleating ability
of all major aerosol types, including
those from the world’s oceans.
Despite oceans covering over 70% of
the planet and sea spray being one
of the dominant aerosol types in the
atmosphere, its role in the formation
of ice in clouds remains poorly
understood. There are strong
indications that biological organic
components of sea spray can
nucleate ice, but the key limitation to
accurately representing INP in
models over the world’s oceans is
the lack of field data.
In his 5-year project, Ben will develop
and deploy a new semi-autonomous
INP instrument based on novel
microfluidics technology which will
cover the full range of mixed phase
cloud conditions, unlike existing
instruments. It will be housed in a
unique highly instrumented mobile
laboratory, which will allow him to
access the remote oceans from
atmospheric observatories and
research ships. The data from these
campaigns will be used to constrain
the oceanic INP source and include
the data in a state-of-the-art global
aerosol model (GLOMAP). These
activities will allow us to quantify this
potentially important source of INP
which is needed to underpin the next
generation of weather and climate
models.
The IMPALA project
IMPALA is a £3M project, led by
the UK Met Office, addressing the
“Future Climate for Africa” (FCFA)
global model development call
from ERC & DfID.
The Leeds component, with a 3-year
PDRA, is led by Doug Parker (PI),
Piers Forster (Co-I) and John
Marsham (Co-I) and will address
both moist convection and dust uplift.
IMPALA aims to produce a step
change in climate modelling
capability for Africa and will start in
2015, running for 4 years, with staff
based at the Met Office, ACMAD,
University of Cape Town, CEH,
University of Exeter, ICPAC,
University of Leeds, University of
Nairobi, NCAS, University of Oxford,
University of Reading, the South
African Weather Service and
University of Yaounde.
The INCOMPASS project
(Doug Parker and John Marsham)
INCOMPASS a major joint UK-
Indian consortium studying the
dynamics of the Indian Monsoon
funded by NERC and the Indian
Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES),
started early this year. INCOMPASS,
led by Andy Turner in Reading, will
involve a large-scale field campaign
in India and over the adjacent
oceans, in the years 2015 and 2016,
and a programme of computer
modelling, with the specific aim of
improving predictions of the
monsoon. The project will support a
3-year postdoctoral research position
in Leeds. The research group at
Leeds will contribute to the airborne
research programme and will lead
the analysis of new high-resolution
models of the monsoon, using the
Met Office forecast model. Two sister
projects were also funded, to study
Indian Ocean dynamics, and to study
atmospheric aerosol processes in the
monsoon system.
Groovy crystals: a new EPSRC funded project
Crystallisation is a widespread
phenomenon in nature and
technology. Snowflakes, gemstones,
table salt, boiler scale and metals are
all crystalline. The ability to
understand and control when, where
and how crystals form and grow is
essential in areas as diverse as
cloud modelling, pharmaceutical
formulation, the semiconductor
industry and the design of dental and
medical prostheses. At present, our
understanding of nucleation and our
ability to direct and control
PROJECT NEWS
crystallisation is very poor. In Groovy
crystals a team from ICAS, Physics
and Chemistry plan to develop and
apply a technique based on
controlling the topography of surfaces
on which crystals grow.
It is thought that crystallization
becomes more favourable if there are
pits or grooves in a surface. There
have, however, been very few
systematic studies of the effect of
topography on crystallization, and the
data are frequently contradictory.
Consequently, we have almost no
understanding of the type of surface
defects that best favour
crystallisation, and to what extent
they may depend on the nature of the
surface and the nature of the
crystallising substance.
Thanks to recent advances in surface
engineering techniques we are now
in a position to design and
manufacture surfaces with nanoscale
defects in a systematic manner which
will allow a detailed assessment of
their effect on nucleation. This
detailed fundamental understanding
of nucleation is important for
atmospheric ice formation because it
will pave the way for a predictive
capacity of what sort of atmospheric
aerosol particles nucleate ice, under
what conditions they will do so and
how to best describe ice nucleation
in models.
This project is a collaboration
between Ben Murray (ICAS), Hugo
Christenson (PI, Physics), Gavin
Burnell (Physics) and Fiona Meldrum
(Chemistry). Dr Mark Holden has just
taken on the Groovy crystals post-
doc position dealing with ice
nucleation and has a desk in ICAS.
PROJECT NEWS
Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science
School of Earth and Environment
Institute Director, Professor Ken Carslaw
Earth and Environment Building
Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
WELCOME
Our new lecturer in Meteorology,
Juliane Schwendike.
Juliane has research interests in
tropical dynamics generally, and
tropical cyclones in particular. She
has a track record of research im-
pacts, including collaboration with
the reinsurance industry.