Scripps Institution of Oceanography Professor V. "Ram" Ramanathan will speak at the University of Colorado at 葫芦娃视频 March 14 on the "Asian Brown Cloud," including the impacts of air pollution on health and climate in the region.
Sponsored by CU-葫芦娃视频's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, the event is free and open to the public. It will be held Friday at 4 p.m. in the CIRES auditorium and a reception will follow at 5 p.m.
Ramanathan is the Victor P. Alderson Professor of Ocean Sciences and director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. An expert on global warming and greenhouse gases, he has received many national and international awards for his research and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Ramanathan was the first to demonstrate that chlorofluorocarbons were major greenhouse gases and significant contributors to global warming. In the 1980s he led an international study that established the field of atmospheric chemistry-climate interactions. He then began researching the effect of clouds on climate.
He teamed up with NASA using satellites to show clouds have a global radiative cooling effect. To understand how aerosols are modifying global warming, he designed and served as co-chief scientist for the $25 million Indian Ocean Experiment, which led to the discovery of the South Asian Brown Cloud and its surprisingly large impact on the solar heating of the region.
"The most visible impact of air pollution is the haze -- a layer of pollutants and particles from fossil fuel and biomass burning and industrial emissions," he said. Due to long-range transport, a localized cloud can be transformed into a regional haze that can span an entire continent or even an entire ocean basin.
"It is now becoming clear that the brown cloud can have large impacts on agriculture, health, climate and the water budget of the planet," said Ramanathan.
The talk will describe the discovery of the Asian Brown Cloud during the Indian Ocean Experiment and subsequent modeling studies that linked the cloud with disruption of regional climate, including the monsoon, El Ni帽o and other impacts.
"The implication of the results thus far is that man-made particulates may be drying the planet," he said.
The event is presented by the Distinguished Lecture Series program sponsored by CIRES. The series features speakers invited for their interdisciplinary range and is designed to stimulate and move dialogue beyond academia.
For more information call (303) 735-0196 or see