Newsletter June 2020

Risto Makkonen: Hello Nondas! Yes, I am a Research Professor at the Finnish Meteorological Institute and university Researcher at the University of Helsinki. I have been on the NOSA board since 2017 and I was elected as NOSA President in October 2019.

N.T.: As many other conferences and meetings, NOSA2020 symposium was cancelled due to the situation with the COVID-19. Many of these went online. Up to 89 people attended the NOSA online mini-symposium. Do you think this situation can lead to more virtual conferences in the future or the physical communication is necessary for delivering scientific results, as well as initiating discussions and collaborations between scientists?

R.M.: The times have been challenging for other communities as well, and to some extent also to science communities. It is difficult, but we need to learn a lot of new ways to interact and communicate, and we most likely have done so in the last few months. Let’s see how the situation evolves but we will benefit from these new ways of communicating, not only now but also in the future, even though there will not be such a dramatic time. Also, by learning new ways of doing this and we have reduced unnecessary travel. I think that has already happened the last 10-15 years, since this kind of virtual meeting tools have been available. Regarding the physical meetings, you cannot replace the interaction between people. I think these virtual meetings are good if you know the people, then you know how to interact and communicate with them. But then meeting new people, making new contacts it is very difficult to replace, even with some novel tools we will have online. So, we will still need both. We will need the physical symposia, conferences, workshops and especially for early career researchers to build up their own networks and community, but it is essential for seniors as well to meet face to face every now and then and have more interaction.

N.T.: Yes, it’s more complex.

R.M.: Yes, there are good things that we have learnt, but we cannot replace the physical environment yet.

N.T.: How can NOSA strengthen the collaboration between researchers in Nordic countries?

R.M.: The main tool is the NOSA symposia. At least in the current form the activities that we have in NOSA, the symposia are the most important. They really bring together Nordic aerosol scientists. Also not only from Nordic countries, but hopefully from around the world as well in attractive conferences. We try to make the NOSA symposia attractive to senior scientists, but we also try even more nowadays to attract the younger audience that is now at their early career stages. This for sure makes easier the collaboration between Nordic aerosol scientists by the increased amount of contacts, meeting new people and finding out new ideas. I think also in NOSA, since the aerosol science itself is highly interdisciplinary, we bring the disciplines together as we don’t have parallel sessions. Everybody is in the same room and there is nice interaction between the different disciplines. This also makes new ways of doing research.

N.T.: Yes, not having parallel sessions is actually helpful, as you are listening to different topics.

R.M.: Yes, then you can get new ideas about what you can do. Because they don’t always emerge from your colleague who is doing the same thing, but really novel ideas from people doing completely different things. So, this is something that is successful in NOSA.  Another thing is the courses that we advertise. They are very important in creating the networks and further collaborations.

N.T.: You are working with climate modelling. Can you describe briefly the progress on climate models since you received your PhD and which are the major remaining constraints in order to reproduce reality?

R.M.: I did my PhD in 2012 and a lot of things have emerged since then. As expected the climate models have increased for example the spatial resolution, so they can resolve finer scale details that they couldn’t do before. In my PhD I was working with a resolution of 200km, now maybe we can say that has come down to 100km or in some cases 50km, but still we cannot resolve everything. Computational capacity has increased and subsequently resolution has increased. Then at the same time the models themselves have become more complex, in terms of having more processes. The research groups actively include the latest findings from field and chamber experiments as well as new parameterization, new modules and new sub-models for the earth system models. So, there is much more complexity and more advanced models. In addition, during the last 10-15 years, there have been more interactions between climate modellers or better earth system modellers and the observation field. So there is much more effort on evaluating the models, but also constraining their results based on what they can find from observations of the real world. And this is very important.

There are a lot of remaining (constraints). If I work with these earth system models, the idea is that the models would represent all the processes in the earth system that are relevant, not only let’s say to global warming, but climate change, environmental change... It’s not only small aspects of what we are experiencing today, but they are supposed to represent the paleoclimate of ten to hundred thousands years ago and to really go into a lot of details in the processes. So there are a lot of things to do in the next ten years. So again to increase resolution maybe we get to resolve for example convection in the atmosphere, which is not possible with the current resolution. We will get much more details in all processes in the atmosphere, ocean , land in the next ten years. I think there is linear change and there are also some stepwise changes that they would probably happen in the next ten years. One thing that I haven’t mentioned is machine learning and artificial intelligence, because that is something (machine learning) that has been re-emerging every, I don’t know, twenty years in different fields, but now...

N.T.: Yes, it’s getting a hot topic also in atmospheric science.

R.M.: Yes, it is. It is really in the climate models. There are projects that try to include machine learning and let’s say AI in climate models in some sub-models to replace a certain module with machine learning capabilities and this has potential for sure. Let’s see, maybe in ten years we know much more what was the potential and what actually happened.

N.T.: The contributions of the three IPCC Working Groups to the Sixth Assessment Report will be finalized in 2021. Do you know to what extent this progress on climate modelling will be reflected in the upcoming Report?

R.M.: Yes, so in parallel to what IPCC is doing there now writing the reports and there is a review of what has been written at the moment for the next reports. At the same time the climate modelling community is making CMIP6, which is the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 and it is one of the biggest and most advanced climate model experiments to date. It is several tens of beta bytes of data that will come out of this experiment. Tens of models, depending on how you count, up to one hundred different models, hundreds of different experiments that are being done. And of course with these state-of-the-art climate models from around the world. Most of that work has been done already and it’s feeding now, hopefully, the IPCC writing project. So, I think the IPCC writers have included the results of this CMIP6 into the report that will then come out. So it will make a considerable fraction of one part of what is being analyzed there.

N.T.: From a social perspective, do you think climate change can create an environmental migration wave in the next decades? And if yes, which areas are more vulnerable according to climate models?

R.M.: So, I am not an expert on this, let’s say at least on migration. But coming from the climate models and the climate projections there are for sure areas that will have more droughts. There is even maybe desertification in certain areas. Of course sea level rise is one thing relevant to this. So coastal areas and even some island communities. Then maybe extreme weather in itself, hurricanes in some parts may be intensified, or other forms of extreme events. For example, extreme precipitation will cause situations that are very undesirable to people living in those areas. So I don’t know about waves. Of course then there might be different kinds of political things happening at the same time and constraints. But I will assume there will be increased environmental migration. There has already been in the last decades and it will continue to increase. So, I wouldn’t pinpoint now specific regions, although of course we see from climate models certain regions that are vulnerable.

N.T.: You coordinate the project Kysyilmastosta.fi service (‘Ask about the climate’) where people can ask questions about climate and receive answers from climate researchers. What is the response of people? Do you remember a question that has attracted your interest?

R.M.: It has been interesting to work with this. We got the ideas a few years ago, and then finally we got funding and managed to put it together. It has raised a lot of interest. I think in the current times there are a lot of sources of information, not only for climate, but it is difficult to point the reliability and maybe the motivations behind these sources of information either in social media, a website or some other place. So we wanted to create this kind of platform where we have one-to-one, almost face to face, communication between the public and the researcher or expert. And I think this is a good concept, in the sense that  creates a feeling that you are really talking to an actual expert on this field. So we hoped to make it also a little bit personal. The public can ask anonymously the questions, but the experts always answer by their names and you can also see their affiliation. We also hope that the experts give a little bit more personal touch. So it doesn’t need to be a textbook answer, but it can reveal a little bit about what we are actually doing. I think scientists are interested in talking also about what they are doing and it’s nice if somebody else from the audience is interested in what they are doing in their daily life. It has been nicely received by the different audiences. There are a lot of good and also complicated questions and it is definitely interesting trying to find the expert to answer these questions. There are a lot of questions on climate change, which was expected, although we tried to market it not only for climate change & global warming, but really about different things around climate. So there is climate mitigation, climate change effects regionally, etc. But then, personally I like most the questions on the climate system itself. So, how does the climate system work, really the fundamentals. What happens, for example, if the atmospheric density is increased by 50%. What happens if all clouds disappear. This kind of really fundamental questions if something happens, what are the effects in different places. Not only questions on what I/we can do, let’s say, to make less climate change, but also trying to understand the system. These I like the most.

N.T.: Aerosol science covers a broad range of different research fields and disciplines. Do you think that aerosol scientists can contribute something against the outbreak of the COVID-19 and how?

R.M.: I think so. Of course there are several things where aerosol science is related to what is happening now in the world. Some aerosol scientists, for example, are looking at what is the effect of these constraints on activities on the aerosol in the atmosphere. But then the question is now what could we do really, for example to research on the coronavirus and the effects of spreading. I think since one of the mechanisms of the spread is through aerosols or droplets, it is clear that we can do something. We can for example investigate the dispersal of these aerosols or droplets from their source, if there is coughing or something like this and then you also get the virus-aerosol dispersed. We can study with dispersal modelling, for example, in closed spaces like a department store. How do they disperse and how long do they stay in the air and can they get to other people as well. That’s one way of spreading the virus and it’s clearly for aerosol and dispersal scientists. If we talk about the coronavirus on the aerosol or droplets, there are a lot of process scale studies looking at what happens to the virus in the aerosol itself, e.g. the stability of the virus on surfaces versus on aerosols. There have already been in Nordic countries several institutes that have participated in these dispersal modelling of corona related aerosols in different environments. There have been really the last two last months many institutes responding quickly to the need, and made some really new combinations of the dispersals (models) in some spaces.

N.T.: I have also seen that some groups are working with masks. The efficiency of different kind of masks and materials on how they allow the transportation of these aerosols. Maybe it’s a short period, but do you think that climate scientists can see a difference in the climate (due to the slowdowns)? Let’s say, have the carbon dioxide emissions or some other pollutants decreased? Or they haven’t been affected?

R.M.: I think we cannot say, yet. We probably shouldn’t say yet. Let’s wait for a while in order to get enough data. Data that we get from stations and satellites. We already see the signal in different things. For example, NOx from pollution we can see clearly in certain regions that it has come down. We expect there are changes in atmospheric chemistry, aerosols and also let’s say CO2 but maybe some others, as well. We expect that there is a signal, but I wouldn’t say yet that there is a significant climate impact of this. It will definitely help us to learn more about the sensitivity of aerosols, for example, to different constraints in human activities. I think when we know more about how much activities were changing, we can get the data from different sectors of human activities, then we can maybe link it better to what we were observing at the natural system or earth and climate system. How things they changed there. This needs a little bit of time, but there is a lot of work emerging now on what are the impacts on the climate system during these past months.

N.T.: Ok, that’s it! Thank you for your time.

R.M.: Thanks, we had some really good questions.