Category Archives: News

Deadline approaching: Submit your abstract to the AMS annual meeting until 24 August 2022

Planning is underway for the 2023 AMS Annual Meeting to be held 8–12 January 2023 in Denver, Colorado at the Colorado Convention Center.

The conference theme for this 103rd Annual Meeting is: “Data: Driving Science. Informing Decisions. Enriching Humanity” 

Abstracts are due by 24 August 2022 at 11:59 PM EDT


The following is a non-exhaustive list of sessions related and/or of interest to the SPARC community :

36th Climate Variability and Change Conference

  • Explaining Extreme Events from a Climate Perspective
  • Large-Scale Atmospheric Dynamics and Climate: Jet Streams, Storm Tracks, Stationary Waves, and Monsoons
  • Monsoon Dynamics: Variability, Change and Impacts
  • Multiyear to Decadal Climate Variability: Mechanisms, Predictability and Prediction
  • Stratosphere-troposphere Coupling and Links to Climate Across Time Scales
  • Subseasonal-to-Seasonal (S2S) Climate Predictability, Prediction, and Applications
  • Upper tropospheric and stratospheric processes (Joint between the 25th Conference on Atmospheric Chemistry and the 36th Conference on Climate Variability and Change)

27th Conference on Integrated Observing and Assimilation Systems for the Atmosphere, Oceans, and Land Surface (IOAS-AOLS)

  • Advances in Data Assimilation and Observing Systems
  • Advances in Data Assimilation Methodology
  • Next-generation observations of atmospheric winds (Joint between 12th Symposium on Lidar Atmospheric Applications and 27th Conference on Integrated Observing and Assimilation Systems for the Atmosphere, Oceans, and Land Surface (IOAS-AOLS))

25th Conference on Atmospheric Chemistry

  • Atmospheric Composition Modeling and Analysis Program (ACMAP)
  • Greenhouse Gases
  • Upper tropospheric and stratospheric processes (Joint between the 25th Conference on Atmospheric Chemistry and the 36th Conference on Climate Variability and Change)

23rd Symposium on Meteorological Observation and Instrumentation

  • Intercomparison, Calibration, and Uncertainties of Instruments
  • Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere
  • Results from Recent Field Projects
  • Innovative Technological Advances for Mesoscale Observing Systems (Joint between the 23rd Symposium on Meteorological Observation and Instrumentation, the 11th Symposium on the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise and the Special Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence)
  • Innovative Tropical Cyclone Observing Systems and Technologies (Joint between the 23rd Symposium on Meteorological Observation and Instrumentation, the 11th Symposium on the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise and the Special Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence)

15th Symposium on Aerosol–Cloud–Climate Interactions

  • Aerosol-climate interactions from regional to global scale
  • Aerosol-radiation interactions
  • Atmospheric ice-nucleating particles and ice formation processes in clouds
  • Measurement and modeling of atmospheric cloud condensation nuclei and related chemistry

13th Conference on Transition of Research to Operations
Significant Roles of Calibration/Validation and Verification in the Transition of Research to Operations to Provide the Science-to-Operations-to-Societal Benefits

  • National and International Program Overviews for Environmental Satellites (Invited) (Joint between the 19th Annual Symposium on Operational Environmental Satellite Systems, the 13th Conference on Transition of Research to Operations, and the 11th AMS Symposium on the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation)
  • FAIR and Open Data and Software within the Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences to Support Transparent, Reusable and Efficient Research and Operations (Joint between the 39th Conference on Environmental Information Processing Technologies, the 26th Conference of Atmospheric Librarians International, the 22nd Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Environmental Science, the 13th Symposium on Advances in Modeling and Analysis Using Python, the 13th Conference on Transition of Research to Operations and the Committee on Open Environmental Information Services)

12th Symposium on Lidar Atmospheric Applications

  • Ground-Based Lidar Instruments and Networks
  • High Altitude (Stratosphere/Mesosphere) Measurements
  • Lidar Datasets for Data Assimilation and Numerical Modeling
  • Next-generation observations of atmospheric winds
  • Next-generation observations of atmospheric winds (Joint between 12th Symposium on Lidar Atmospheric Applications and 27th Conference on Integrated Observing and Assimilation Systems for the Atmosphere, Oceans, and Land Surface (IOAS-AOLS))

11th AMS Symposium on the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA)

  • Assimilation of Active Sensor Data From Satellites including lidar, radar, and GNSSRO
  • Data Assimilation to Support Evolving Modeling and Satellite Observation Systems
  • Improved Techniques and Methods to Support Satellite Data Assimilation
  • The Joint Effort for Data Assimilation Integration (JEDI): Advances and Applications

Third Symposium on Mesoscale Processes

  • Mesoscale and Climate Processes;
  • Mesoscale process parameterizations and modeling;
  • Tropical Mesoscale Convective System;

Deadline extended: Registration to SPARC General Assembly open until 22 August

Registrations  Registration deadline has been extended by one week and has now been shifted to 22 August 2022. This is for in-person attendance only, for online participation, the deadline remains on 9 October 2022

Please remember, that there are limited amounts of tickets for each of the three hubs, so please make sure to register in time!

If you wish you register for the SPARC General Assembly, please visit the conference website. When registering for the event please indicate which hub you intend to travel to. Given that there are still some strict quarantine requirements for anyone travelling from outside of China, we recommend to everyone outside of China to attend the SPARC GA at the Boulder or UK hub, or to attend the meeting online. 

Given the current COVID pandemic and the uncertainties and changes it might bring we encourage anyone attending the SPARC GA in person to consider refundable tickets/accommodation. We will keep the SPARC GA website updated on the COVID situation.


Registration for in person attendance closes: 22 August 2022 at 11:59 pm UTC

Get Your Ticket

SPARC Science update: 02 August – – 08 August

A selection of new science articles from the past week of interest to the SPARC community (a SPARC Office choice).


High-resolution aircraft observations of turbulence and waves in the free atmosphere and comparison with global model predictions. By A. Dörnbrack, P. Brechtold, and U. Schumann in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Errors in simple climate model emulations of past and future global temperature change. By L.S. Jackson et al. in the Geophysical Research Letters.

The role of atmospheric dynamics and large-scale topography in driving heatwaves. By B. Jiménez-Esteve and D.I.V. Domeisen

How can Brewer–Dobson circulation trends be estimated from changes in stratospheric water vapour and methane? By L. Poshyvailo-Strube et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.


Discussion papers – open for comment:

Monitoring sudden stratospheric warmings under climate change based on reanalysis data verified by radio occultation. By Y. Li et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Interactive Stratospheric Aerosol models response to different amount and altitude of SO2 injections during the 1991 Pinatubo eruption. By I. Quaglia et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Early Registration & Abstract submission deadline approching: Tipping Points – from climate crisis to positive transformation

Reserve your place now 

Registration deadline – 8th August 

Late booking and final deadline – 21st August 

Abstract submission deadline – 8th August 

This meeting is a ‘call to action’ to form an alliance to improve warnings of the proximity of catastrophic climate tipping points and to accelerate positive tipping points to avert the climate crisis. Speakers will be from academia, industry, government, and Third Sectors.  

Co-convened by Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Tim Lenton, Director of Global Systems Institute, additional Chairs include Justin Rowlatt, Gaia Vince, and Oliver Morton

Speakers confirmed include Speakers include W. Brian Arthur, Santa Fe Institute, Patricia Pinho, Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) and Keywan Riahi, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). 

Over three days participants will go on a journey from facing up to the risks from climate change tipping points to being empowered by the opportunities in triggering positive social tipping points. 

Please have a look at the latest programme for further information on the speakers, workshops and plenaries. 

Find more information here.

Latest News from Future Earth

Find the latest Future earth newsletter here.

Topics include:

  • Survey: Communications within Future Earth community
  • Announcement: Future Earth Day: “International Cooperation for Research on Global Sustainability”
  • Upcoming registration deadline on 8 August for “Tipping Points – From Climate Crisis to Positive Transformation”
  • Webinar announcements
  • IPBES report
  • Call for participants: TERRA School 2022
  • Call for Abstracts: 2022 Workshop on Earth Observation for Ecosystem Accounting
  • and more…

SPARC Science update: 25 July – 01 August

A selection of new science articles from the past week of interest to the SPARC community (a SPARC Office choice).


Coupled stratosphere-troposphere-Atlantic multidecadal oscillation and its importance for near-future climate projection. By N.-E. Omrani in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science.

Stratospheric ozone trends for 1984–2021 in the SAGE II–OSIRIS–SAGE III/ISS composite dataset. By K. Bognar et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Australian wildfire smoke in the stratosphere: the decay phase in 2020/2021 and impact on ozone depletion. By K. Ohneiser et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

New impact diagnostics for cross-validation of different observation types. By O. Stiller in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Unexpected Repartitioning of Stratospheric Inorganic Chlorine After the 2020 Australian Wildfires. By S.E. Strahan et al. in the Geophysical Research Letters.

A renewed rise in global HCFC-141b emissions between 2017–2021. By L.M. Western et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.


Discussion papers – open for comment:

On the Additivity of Climate Responses to the Volcanic and Solar Forcing in the Early 19th Century. By S.-W. Fang et al. in the EGUsphere

Upcoming deadlines for iCACGP-IGAC2022

Poster Abstract Submission ENDS 1 August 2022.
Submit late breaking posters here! (note: will direct you to sign in to Oxford Abstracts). Posters will be presented formally online in gather.town and informally in-person during networking/social sessions at the conference. 

Conference Information
Main conference website here.

Discounted room rates for the Manchester Conference ends 15 August 2022
Please book your room here before the deadline to take advantage of discounted rates!

Modelling the Climate System at Ultra-High-Resolution

Abstract submissions and registrations are open for the workshop “Modelling the Climate System at Ultra-High-Resolution: Resolving atmospheric storms, ocean sub-mesoscale eddies, rivers and glaciers”.

The workshop will take place on 3 to 7 October 2022 in Boulder, CO, USA and hosted by NCAR. It is being organized by WCRP Digital Earths Lighthouse Activity and Earth System Modelling and Observations (ESMO) Core Project.

Deadlines
Abstract submissions: 31st August
Registrations: 19th September

For more information visit the workshop website.

Release of stratosphere-focused chemical reanalysis M2-SCREAM

We are pleased to announce the release of the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications – 2 (MERRA-2) Stratospheric Composition Reanalysis of Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (M2-SCREAM) developed at NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office in collaboration with the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) team.

This stratosphere-focused chemical reanalysis provides assimilated global three-dimensional fields of ozone, water vapor, hydrogen chloride (HCl), nitric acid (HNO3), and nitrous oxide (N2O) mixing ratios, all of which are of primary importance to stratospheric chemistry and transport studies. M2-SCREAM assimilates MLS profile observations of these five species, alongside total ozone data from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument, with the recently developed Constituent Data Assimilation System (CoDAS). The system configuration includes a stratospheric chemistry module, StratChem and a version of the GEOS global circulation model with the dynamics constrained by meteorological fields from MERRA-2. The assimilated output is provided at a 50-km horizontal resolution on 72 model layers and at a three-hourly frequency. Analysis uncertainties are provided in a separate monthly data collection. A description and validation manuscript has been submitted to Earth System Science Data.

The current release covers the period from October 2004 to December 2021. Periodic updates are planned for the remainder of the MLS mission.

The M2-SCREAM data are available to the public through the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) and can be accessed here.

A longer release statement can be found here.