ESOC coffee hour occurs weekly from 9-10am Wednesdays in the ESOC Reading Room (Ekeley W230). Please email Claire Waugh (waughc@colorado.edu) for information.

ESOC researchers, post-docs and graduate students gather for conversation and to discuss research. Occasional guest speakers are invited to give short presentations on topics of interest. Each week has a different host.

Celebrating a Relentless Curiosity: Peter Molnar 1943-2022

Saturday, October 8, 2022 // 1:00 pm
Byron R. White Stadium Club, 2150 Stadium Drive, University of Colorado Boulder

Agenda

• 1:00-1:15 Welcome and Introduction (Robert Anderson, Steven Roecker, Waleed Abdalati)
• 1:15-1:55 Philip England will speak on "Peter's Relentless Quest to Understand the Solid Earth"
• 1:55-2:05 Interlude – Vignettes about doing science with Peter Molnar
• 2:05-2:45 Carmala Garzione will speak on "Peter's Relentless Quest to Resolve Lithospheric Processes from Surface Climate and Environment”
• 2:45-2:55 Break
• 2:55-3:35 David Battisti will speak on "The Impact of Large-Scale Orography on Climate"
• 3:35-3:45 Interlude – Vignettes about doing science with Peter Molnar
• 3:45-4:25 Tim Cronin will speak on "Ice ages, islands, and tropical climate: A decade of research with Peter"
• 4:25-4:30 Closing remarks
• 4:30-5:30 Unstructured socializing and reminiscing

Please join us virtually via YouTube.

In Lieu of Flowers · Memorial contributions may be made to the Peter H. Molnar Endowed Scholarship Fund:

Sara Neustadtl and the Molnar family, Alyosha, Erika, Vivian and Kestrel, have established the Peter H. Molnar Endowed Scholarship in Earth, Atmospheric and Climate Science. We hope this scholarship will create a pathway for underserved students in the geosciences. For information, or to participate, please contact Jazmin Kay Brooks at jazmin.brooks@colorado.edu.

Parking Information:

Please see below for parking information at the Folsom Parking Garage. Please pay for parking when you arrive using your license plate. Pay at the machines located by the elevators. Take the elevator (located along the west side of the garage) to Level 2. Exit the building and walk South down the Buff Walk to the entrance of the Stadium Club. Take the elevator to the 5th Floor.

Join McMurdo scientist, Jackson Jandreau, from McMurdo Antarctica for a 10-15 minute lesson on a day in the life at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, followed by a Q&A. Join live with your classroom on camera, ask your questions directly to Jackson and his colleagues, and get excited about polar science! We look forward to showing lots of amazing photos, and videos and answering the following questions with us. 

A Day in the Life at McMurdo

• Where is McMurdo and how do we get there? 
• How many people live there and what is it like? 
• What does Jackson's day look like while he is down there? 
• Who is the McMurdo LIDAR team? 
• What other science is happening? 
• What do you do for fun in Antarctica? 
• How can you become a Polar Scientist in Antarctica? 

Register for the link: https://bit.ly/3Akryav

More information about CIRES Education & Outreach's Science Show & Share: https://cires.colorado.edu/outreach/programs/science-show-share

About the Speaker - Jackson Jandreau

Jackson is a 3rd year Ph.D. student at CIRES/CU Boulder studying aerospace engineering and atmospheric science. His research interests include the dynamics of the middle and upper atmosphere and the design and operation of lidar systems. Jackson visited Antarctica in the summer of 2019-2020 and will spend 15 months on the ice operating the lidar observatory starting in the fall of 2022.

ESOC coffee hour occurs weekly from 9-10am Wednesdays in the ESOC Reading Room (Ekeley W230). Please email Claire Waugh (waughc@colorado.edu) for information.

ESOC researchers, post-docs and graduate students gather for conversation and to discuss research. Occasional guest speakers are invited to give short presentations on topics of interest. Each week has a different host.

This monthly CIRES Visiting Fellows and Post-docs Get-Together will take place on October 18 from 3:30 to 5:30 pm at Scott Carpenter Park. 

This is a fun, social event open to all Visiting Fellows and Post-docs at CIRES, and is a great opportunity to meet new and friendly faces across CIRES. Partners and families are welcome! Drinks and snacks will be provided.

The event is organized by Christine Wiedinmyer, CIRES Associate Director for Science, and Jennifer Katzung. Please look for them with some lawn chairs set up in the park near the parking lot on 30th Street, just south of the pool. For any questions or help with directions, please contact Jennifer at jennifer.katzung@colorado.edu.

Please join the CMC for their monthly meeting. Join by Google Meet or phone: (US) +1 440-772-1774 (PIN: 916729419).

Rapid Ecological Change & Transformation Across the Middle and Southern Rockies During a Previous Climate Warming

Thursday, October 20, 2022, 11 AM - 12 PM MDT

Presented by: SHELLEY CRAUSBAY, US Forest Service

Register in advance for this meeting: https://cuboulder.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcodO2gqjwiG9By3S82z_va35JGz...

ABSTRACT:

How did rapid ecological change and transformation in the Middle and Southern Rockies unfold during a previous, dramatic climate warming? Answering this question could help resource managers better prepare for such phenomena in the future. We leveraged the Neotoma Paleoecology Database to develop the record of landscape-scale rapid ecological change and transformation of vegetation over the last 21,000 years in the Middle and Southern Rockies ecoregions. We modeled the climate drivers of rapid vegetation change and transformation at the landscape scale with TRacE21ka paleoclimate output in Boosted Regression Trees, and we modeled the role of landscape characteristics at the site-level with a Bayesian approach. We identified 60 unique transformations across all 29 sites that took 21 different forms. We found that, at the landscape scale, a 2 ℃ rise in temperature initiated rapid ecological change, and a 5 ℃ rise led to ecological transformation. We also found that landscape characteristics played only a minor role in climate-driven vegetation change, with somewhat faster change on southwest-facing slopes in the Southern Rockies. In addition, transition out of any one particular vegetation type generally resulted in a diverse array of ecological trajectories and outcomes across sites, suggesting that managers would benefit from considering multiple potential ecological futures in climate adaptation planning. This study shows that rapid warming, to the degree expected within the next few decades in the Southern and Middle Rockies, can trigger landscape-scale ecological changes, regardless of the landscape context.

About the speaker:

Shelley Crausbay, Ph.D., is currently a Climate Adaptation Specialist for the US Forest Service, and was formerly a Consortium Partner of the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center.  Shelley is trained as a plant community ecologist and paleoecologist, with experience in climatology. She has worked across diverse geographies, from the western US, to Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Hawaiʻi. Her work focuses on understanding triggers of ecological state changes, climate drivers of vegetation dynamics, and the role of disturbance in a changing climate context.  Shelley is most interested in linking science to action and she uses ecological models and science synthesis to foster proactive management strategies that address ecological responses to our swiftly changing environment.  She received her Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and her M.S. in Plant Biology from the University of Minnesota.

Developing and deploying new technologies will be key to decoupling the dramatic improvements of the past century in human material well-being from their environmental impacts. Developing and deploying sustainability technologies at scale is a complex social, political, and engineering challenge.

Please join us for an in-person workshop that will bring together North American thought leaders working on the social-science aspects of this challenge.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Creative Climate Communication and Behavior Change (C3BC) and the CIRES Center for Social and Environmental Futures (C-SEF).

Everyone is welcome. Register for free Eventbrite tickets here. Coffee and cookies will be provided throughout the day. 

Location: Kittredge Central Hall, Kittredge Market, 2480 Kittredge Loop Dr, Boulder, CO, 80310 at the University of Colorado Boulder

Session 1: Food technology (9:10 am - 10:10 am)

Peter Newton (CU Boulder), Yoel Inbar (U. Toronto), Leaf Van Boven (CU Boulder)

Session 2: Climate risk and geoengineering (10:40 am - 12:00 pm)

Jonathon Moyer (U. Denver), Kaitlin Raimi (U. Michigan), Gernot Wagner (Columbia), Benjamin Converse (U. Virginia)

Session 3: Technology and motivation (1:00 pm - 2:20 pm)

Kyri Baker (CU Boulder), Ian Lange (Colorado School of Mines), Trisha Shrum (U. Vermont), Gabrielle Wong-Parodi (Stanford)

Session 4: Energy transition politics and policy (2:50 pm - 4:10 pm)

Lisa Dilling (CU Boulder), Maxwell Boykoff (CU Boulder), Ezra Markowitz (U. Mass Amherst), Matthew Burgess (CU Boulder)

Quantifying particulate halogens in the atmosphere: Airborne measurements and instrumentation
Dongwook Kim,
ANYL 3rd year, Jimenez group

"Halogens in the atmosphere play important roles in ozone chemistry. Halogen chemistry studies have been mainly focused on gas-phase chlorine, iodine, and bromine chemistry. Particulate halogens can be a reservoir for reactive halogens and can directly interact with ozone. However, they have not been well-constrained in chemical transport models due to a lack of measurements on a global scale. Recently, we have quantified submicron particulate halogens, as well as speciation of oxidation states, from several airborne datasets measured by the University of Colorado High-Resolution Aerodyne Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (CU-HR-AMS). We have identified sources that were previously not well recognized. We present particulate halogen measurements (i.e., I, Br, ClO4-) over urban, remote, and wildfire conditions as well as instrumental development for stratospheric aerosol sampling.

(1) On aircraft platforms, AMS uses an aerodynamic lens that requires constant upstream pressure to work consistently. Airborn interfaces that provide that (pressure-controlled inlets –PCI-) have historically performed less well at high altitudes. We show the recent development of a new PCI inlet design coupled with a PM2.5 aerodynamic lens towards the goal of sampling PM1 aerosols up to ~15 km altitude.

(2) The first quantitative detection of iodine (both particle and gas phase) in the stratosphere has been reported (Koenig et al., 2020). It suggested that particulate iodine is a major fraction in the stratosphere. We present particulate iodine measurement up to the lower stratosphere over the Pacific Ocean during NSF TI3GER and its implications for stratospheric ozone.

(3) Reactive halogens (i.e., chlorine and bromine) can affect urban air quality by providing radical sources. We show that particulate bromine is emitted by anthropogenic sources and compare it with other ground measurements. Also, we identify particulate iodine sources and discuss the potential impact on air quality.

(4) We quantify the emission of particulate iodine from Western US wildfires during FIREX-AQ. We found that particulate fore could be the major form of iodine emission from US wildfires.

(5) Exposure to perchlorate affects the human endocrine system. While the atmospheric sources of perchlorate are highly uncertain, snow and ice core records suggest that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) might be important precursors for the photochemical production of perchlorate in the stratosphere. We show the first global in-situ perchlorate measurements from the ATom campaign over the remote oceans and comparison to the GEOS-Chem model with updated perchlorate-related mechanisms. Also, we show anthropogenic emissions of perchlorate that may affect the tropospheric perchlorate burden. "

ESOC coffee hour occurs weekly from 9-10am Wednesdays in the ESOC Reading Room (Ekeley W230). Please email Claire Waugh (waughc@colorado.edu) for information. This week hosted by ESOC director, Dr. Kristy Tiampo.

ESOC researchers, post-docs and graduate students gather for conversation and to discuss research. Occasional guest speakers are invited to give short presentations on topics of interest. Each week has a different host.

CU Boulder is partnering with a group of CU students, staff and faculty, led by CIRES fellow Matthew Burgess, to organize a dialogue series aimed at building empathy and understanding across political and other divisions. A group of students, staff, and faculty, in collaboration with the CU Dialogues Program, meets monthly on Thursdays on Zoom. Regular participants so far have included faculty and staff, undergraduate and graduate students, plus community members, Regents, and other elected officials. We welcome all viewpoints and perspectives and fundamentally aim to better understand the issues and where each of us is coming from, not to "win" a debate on any particular topic. Learn more about the series here, or sign up via Google form here. 

Chemistry of Organic Compounds in the Atmosphere and Indoor Air
Paul Ziemann,
ANYL faculty, CU Boulder

"Laboratory studies provide much of the fundamental data on reaction kinetics, products, and mechanisms that are needed to understand atmospheric and indoor air chemistry and to develop models that are used to establish air quality regulations and predict the effects of human activities. Research in my laboratory focuses primarily on environmental chamber studies of the atmospheric chemistry of organic compounds emitted from natural and anthropogenic sources and the physical and chemical processes by which oxidized organic reaction products form aerosol particles. In addition to this we have conducted a number of collaborative studies of indoor air chemistry at CU. In this talk I will provide a brief overview of recent research in my lab for the purpose of informing first-year chemistry graduate students."

and

Sustainable Magnesium Production via Molten Salt Electrolysis and G-METS Distillation
Madison Rutherford,
ANYL 1st year, CU Boulder

"Current methods of magnesium production are prohibitively expensive and resource intensive with low energy efficiency and high environmental impact. Molten salt electrolysis (MSE) using a reactive liquid cathode, e.g., tin, combined with vapor compression distillation in a gravity-driven multiple effect thermal-system (G-METS VCD) can significantly reduce the energy requirement and environmental impact of both magnesium primary production and recycling. This presentation presents a techno-economic model of cost, energy consumption, and emissions associated with magnesium primary production via MSE and G-METS VCD. The model includes a mass balance with 17 elements, electrolysis process energy balance with carbon or solid oxide membrane anodes, and detailed operating and capital cost estimates. Based on the properties of magnesium and expected operating conditions, the cost of magnesium production using this process could be comparable to or lower than that of aluminum production. Initial electrolysis experiments show high current efficiencies with both carbon and SOM anodes, and future work on G-METS VCD is outlined."