26 March 2025 | 08:30 - 12:00 (MDT)
Open Session - HYBRID
Room: UMC Third Floor - 382
Organisers: Jessie Creamean (Colorado State University); Jennie Thomas (IGE/CNRS); Megan Willis (Colorado State University)
Session Description:
The polar oceans, sea-ice, and atmosphere form a tightly coupled system with poorly represented interconnected processes in climate models. Understanding these interactions is essential for projecting sea-ice impacts on atmospheric gases, aerosols, and cloud cover over polar oceans. These factors influence sea-ice melt, freeze-up, and biogeochemical activity through nutrient exchange and solar radiation scattering. With changing climates and sea-ice at both poles, focused attention from Earth system scientists is crucial.
Currently, communities studying individual components (ocean, sea-ice, snow, atmosphere) work in parallel rather than collaboratively, due to differing spatial and temporal scales of observations. This hinders our ability to describe key processes and develop coupled climate models. To address this, multiple research communities with expertise in the atmosphere, ocean, and sea within the polar and Arctic regions are collaborating. Their goals are to (1) refine the conceptual representation of relevant processes, and (2) address key uncertainties in biological and chemical controls on atmospheric chemistry, aerosols, and clouds.