Dear RegCNETers:

We invite you to contribute to the following session at the upcoming AGU Fall Meeting, 15-19 December 2008 in San Francisco.  Please note the abstract submission deadline of 10 September at 23:59 UTC.

GC13:  Regional-Scale Forcing of Climate  (co-sponsored by Atmospheric Sciences)

Considerable effort has been devoted towards understanding and quantifying global climate forcings, including orbital variations, greenhouse gases, aerosols, and ice-albedo feedbacks. However, these studies often lack the fine-scale spatial and temporal detail needed to quantify the forcings that drive local and regional climate variability and change. Past research indicates that fine-scale processes such as land cover change and aerosol-cloud interactions can influence the surface energy balance, convective clouds, and precipitation, yet significant uncertainties in these regional forcings still exist. Short-lived atmospheric constituents also likely alter the local and regional scale climate, yet these are largely unexplored or poorly constrained. In this session, we will investigate regional climate forcings and feedbacks, including but not limited to: short-lived greenhouse gases and atmospheric aerosols, land cover change, biogeochemical feedbacks, and local and synoptic meteorological forcings. We encourage submissions that focus on regional forcings using measurement and/or modeling techniques.

Conveners:
Noah Diffenbaugh, Purdue University
Athanasios Nenes, Georgia Institute of Technology
Allison Steiner, University of Michigan




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Allison Steiner
Assistant Professor
Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences
University of Michigan
2517E Space Research Building
2455 Hayward Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2143
phone: 734.764.5150
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