| Session Details | |
| Section | AS - Atmospheric Sciences |
| Session Title | Anthropogenic Pollution and Regional Climate Impacts in Asia and Oceania |
| Main Convener | Dr. Jason Cohen (MIT-Singapore Alliance for Research and Technology Center, Singapore) |
| Co-convener(s) | Dr. Chien Wang (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States) Dr. S Suresh Babu (Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, India) |
| Session Description | Anthropogenic pollutants including reactive gasses and aerosols lead to impacts on human health and the climate system through many direct and indirect mechanisms. These mechanisms range from radiative forcings of ozone and aerosols, changes in clouds, rainfall, and thus hydrological cycle due to anthropogenic aerosols with different microphysical structures and compositions, to changes in ecosystem and agricultural yields due to acid deposition or excessive ozone exposure, and to impacts on atmospheric circulations in various scales, such as the monsoons and urban canyons. Anthropogenic pollution results from many different industrial, transportation, household, and biomass burning sources, its present day characterization and future prediction are thus both widely variable. Furthermore, due to the large heterogeneity of their concentrations and the small spatial and temporal scales involved in their atmospheric evolution, the impact of anthropogenic pollutants on regional climate along with human health and ecosystem is believed to be significant while still poorly understood. This is an important issue in Asia and Oceania since the fast economic growth and since physics, chemistry, dynamics, land surfaces, and other driving forces of climate are quite different in this region than the rest of the world. This session solicits papers that characterize the emissions, distributions, and atmospheric processes of various pollutants specifically over Asian and Oceanic regions. It also solicits papers that address various aspects of regional climate impacts of anthropogenic pollution from different perspectives and covering different temporal and spatial scales, such as: modeling, measurements, theory, and field campaigns. Given the multiple anthropogenic, physical, chemical, biological, and other aspects of this problem, multidisciplinary studies and approaches, along with studies of impacts on human health, ecosystem, and agriculture, are strongly encouraged as well. |