COAA

COAA 2014 Spring Science Workshop

On May 3rd 2014, the Chinese-American Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (COAA) held its 2014 Spring Science Workshop at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. The workshop was well participated by scientists from NASA, NOAA, and universities. Some participants attended the workshop remotely via WEBEX. The workshop was opened by the president of COAA, Dr. Chung-Chu Teng, who gave the guests a warm welcome and an introduction to the event. Two keynote talks were given in the morning session, followed by five invited presentations in the afternoon.

The workshop keynote presentations were kicked off by Dr. Mian Chin, a senior NASA GSFC scientist who is known for her pioneer work on aerosol modeling studies. She gave a thought-provoking lecture titled as: "Aerosol: then and now (and future?)". Dr. Chin started her talk by an impressive story of her own past experience. Then, she gave a very inspiring introduction on the aerosol observations and modeling, as well as the direct and indirect impacts of aerosols on weather, climate, environment and human health. Dr. Chin also presented the assessment of the aerosol variations over the last three decades (1980-2009) in different regions and the anthropogenic and natural contributions to these changes from satellite observations, ground-based measurements, and a global model GOCART. The presentation ended with Dr. Chin's thought and vision about future strategies and directions of the aerosol effect studies.

Prof. Dalin Zhang from Univ. of Maryland at College Park then presented the other keynote talk titled as "Recent advances in tropical cyclogenesis (TCG) research". Before diving into the scientific presentation Professor Zhang presented a very informative introduction about himself, about how he became a world-known scientist from a kid grown up during the Cultural Revolution and without much formal education. His experience was a vivid lesson to the young scientists and students that the successful scientist never gives up in the ups and downs of his life. Started his presentation by introducing the concepts of TCG, Professor Zhang explained its importance for understanding and predicting the tropical cyclone initiation, intensity development and structure configuration. The latest development and progress on the TCG research and hypotheses of TCG processes were reviewed in details. Results presented suggest that both the upper- and low-level atmospheric and oceanic processes should be considered in order to understand and to predict the TCG.

After the keynote lectures, the participants enjoyed a Pizza-and-Wing lunch provided by COAA. The lunch break was filled with friendly atmosphere with lots of discussions and exchanges of scientific ideas and life stories. The workshop continued after the lunch with 5 young scientists' presentations, covering wide topics across the most frontier atmosphere, ocean and land research and applications. Prof. Zhibo Zhang (UMBC) presented "Emerging Satellite Observations of Above-Cloud Aerosols and Direct Radiative Forcing"; Dr Xuesong Zhang (JGCRI) presented "Balancing Human Needs and Ecosystem Services to Develop a Sustainable Biofuels Industry: A Modeling Systems Approach"; Dr Tianle Yuan (UMBC/JCET) gave a talk on "What does nature tell us about anthropogenic aerosol indirect effects?"; Dr. Caihong Wen (NOAA/NCEP) presented "Changes in Tropical Pacific Thermocline Depth and Their Relationship to ENSO after 1999"; The workshop finished with Dr. Sanmei Li (GMU)'s presentation on "Development of Integrated High Resolution Flood Product with Multi-Source Data".

Pictures taken at the event can be found here.