The Seminar took place at the Auditorium of the Institute of Chemical Engineering Sciences (FORTH/ICE-HT) Conference Centre (Stadiou str.-Platani Patras), on Wednesday, November 6, 2024 (12.00).

Speaker: Athanasios Nenes, Professor of Atmospheric Processes and heads the Laboratory of Atmospheric Processes and their Impacts (LAPI) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland.

The Seminar was in English.

Much of the predictive uncertainty around human impacts on climate, and the frequency of extreme events such as storms and floods is related to poorly understood clouds and their interactions with atmospheric particles (“aerosols”). Addressing these needs require vast amounts of information, improved sensing of the atmosphere especially at the “climate hotspots” of the Mediterranean and the Arctic, and inclusion of multiscale physics and chemistry in weather & climate models – through the use of process parameterization and machine learning.

At the heart of all this is the Horizon Europe CleanCloud project, and a unique climate-relevant experiment that has been going on at the heart of the Peloponnese since October 2024 at Mount Helmos-the CHOPIN campaign (Cleancloud Helmos Orographic observation experImeNt).

During CHOPIN (https://go.epfl.ch/chopin-campaign/), a one-of-a-kind synergy of airborne, in-situ, and remote sensing platforms is in place to study the influences of meteorology, aerosol sources (bacteria, fungal spores, pollen, dust, smoke and pollution) and other factors on the development of clouds, rain and snow. Apart from developing a better understanding of what controls cloud formation and precipitation – focusing on sources that express the post-fossil world (e.g., dust, bioaerosol and wildfire smoke), we also use the data collected to develop and improve algorithms used by weather radar, aerosol lidar and satellites to better understand and constrain these processes at a global scale. We show some initial results and also demonstrate the potential of our unique observations using data collected at an earlier tester campaign at Mt.Helmos called CALISHTO, and demonstrate the powerful insights that the fusion of modeling, remote sensing and in-situ observations can provide on these highly uncertain processes.

Athanasios Nenes is a Professor of Atmospheric Processes and heads the Laboratory of Atmospheric Processes and their Impacts (LAPI) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. He is an affiliate researcher of the Institute of Chemical Engineering Science at the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas in Patras, Greece and a founding member and co-coordinator of the Center of Studies on Air quality and Climate Change at the institute. His research focuses on the impact of atmospheric processes (especially aerosol) on clouds, climate, air quality and ecosystems. He is the prime author of the ISORROPIA aerosol thermodynamics models, aerosol-cloud interaction parameterizations, and developer of instrumentation to measure aerosol properties and Cloud Condensation Nuclei. He is a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher (2020-2023), having authored/co-authored more than 380 manuscripts (Google Scholar citations: 38124, h=101). He has served as President of Atmospheric Sciences of the European Geophysical Union (EGU), co-Chair of the EGU Annual Assembly (2023-2024), is an expert of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR7 WG1, member of the UN Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (WG38: Atmospheric input of chemicals to the ocean), and served on the US National Academies Committee on the Future of Atmospheric Chemistry Research, Secretary of Atmospheric Sciences of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and Editor in the Copernicus journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. He is a Fellow of the AGU, the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) and is a member of the Academia Europaea. Distinctions include the Copernicus Medal, ERC Consolidator Grant, AGU Ascent Award, AAAR Sinclair, Whitby and Friedlander Awards, American Meteorological Society Houghton Award; NASA New Investigator Award and a US National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He has mentored 25 PhD students and 28 postdocs.