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Dr. Charles (Charlie) Zender

Professor of Earth System Science and of Computer Science

Vice-Chair of Graduate Studies, Department of Earth System Science

Research Interests: Atmospheric Physics including climate change, desert dust and fire-emitted soot particulates, snowpack lifecycle and reflectance, wind-dispersal of nutrients and pathogens, wind-drag effects on deserts and oceans, and super-dooper-big-scale data analysis.

Regular Address (good for FedEx, too):

3200 Croul Hall

University of California, Irvine

Irvine, CA 92697-3100

Directions: Driving, Campus, Parking

Office: 3323 Croul Hall

Office Hours (and by appointment all year): Fridays 4:00–5:00 PM

Additional Office Hours (Fall only): After ESS H90 classes 12:30–1:30 PM

Email: surname@uci.edu (yes, my surname is zender)

Office/Cell: (949) 891-2429, Fax: (949) 824-3874

Grad Student Office: Croul Hall 3242

Postdoc/Researcher office: Croul Hall 1101F

Public PGP key served by UCI and by pgp.mit.edu

Key ID: 6F635D10

Fingerprint: DBD0 E788 E13C 56A2 6C5D 2C62 CB91 49AD 6F63 5D10

My spam filter is set to “Terminate with Extreme Prejudice” so, if you write to me from an unknown e-mail address and I do not respond within a week, then your mail may be on exhibit in my rarely visited spam collection rather than my Inbox—please call instead!

Send me open-format (not proprietary) documents only, so that I may read them with Ubuntu (“oo-BOON-too”), a flavor of Debian GNU/Linux. “Ubuntu” is a Bantu word which means “I am what I am because of who we all are” and “humanity to others”.

Measuring snow reflectance with lasers in LGGE's −15C coldroom

The CHARM group works through a transport algorithm

People

Researchers:

Henry Butowsky (10/2000–4/2010), Scientific Programmer: Efficient Data Analysis with Storage-Layer Constraints
Pedro Vicente (6/2012–present), Scientific Programmer: Simplifying and accelerating model evaluation by NASA satellite data

Postdocs:

None currently.

Graduate Students:

Wenshan Wang (8/2012–), PhD student in Earth System Science: Simplifying and accelerating model evaluation by NASA satellite data

Undergraduates:

None currently.

High School:

Alex Krolewski (6/2010–), University High School student: Characterizing Fire-emitted Aerosol Plume Shapes

Alumni: Former graduate students, post-docs, researchers, and software-engineers:

Dr. Bob Allen (10/2008–10/2010). Post-doc on polar climate responses to anthropogenic forcing. Now professor at UCR.
Dr. Huisheng Bian (10/2001–9/2003): Postdoc on Mineral Dust & Atmospheric Chemistry. Now researcher at UMBC GEST/NASA GSFC.
Dr. Scott Capps (3/2005–11/2009), PhD in Earth System Science: “Surface Wind Speed Distributions: Implications for Climate and Wind Power” (PDF). Now postdoc at UCLA.
Dr. Mark Flanner (3/2003–6/2007): PhD in Earth System Science: “Effects of Vertically-Resolved Solar Heating, Snow Aging, and Black Carbon on Snow-Albedo Feedback” (PDF). Now professor at U. Michigan.
Dr. Alf Grini (1/2002–2/2004): PhD in Geosciences: “Natural Aerosols in the Global Atmosphere” (U. Oslo) (PDF). Now software engineer in Norway.
Dr. Qin Han (3/2005–12/2010), PhD in Earth System Science: Crustal Tracers in the Atmosphere and Ocean: Relating their Concentrations, Fluxes, and Ages (PDF).
Dr. Chao Luo (2/2005–10/2006): Researcher on Aerosols and Atmospheric Chemistry. Now researcher with Cornell/UCSB.
Dr. Harry Mangalam (2/2005–3/2006): Specialist in Scientific Computing. Now with UCI NACS/RCS.
Dr. David Newman (11/2001–4/2003): Specialist in Scientific Computing. Now researcher with UCI ICS.
Mike Tosca (7/2006–3/2012), PhD in Earth System Science: Fire and smoke in the Earth system: Evaluating the impact of fire aerosols on regional and global climate (PDF). Now postdoc at JPL.
Dr. Daniel Wang (10/2005–11/2008), PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science: “Compilation, Locality Optimization, and Managed Distributed Execution of Scientific Dataflows” (joint with S. Jenks of EECS) (PDF). Now researcher at SLAC.
Dr. Xianwei Wang (6/2008–12/2010). Post-doc on detecting anthropogenic influences on global snow cover. Now professor at Sun Yat-Sen University.

Research Interests

Biographical Sketch (NSF format, two pages), Curriculum vitae (complete academic information), Current and Pending funding (NSF format), Poetry (Huh?)

I educate, train students, and conduct research at UC Irvine. My teaching includes undergraduate and graduate courses on global environmental issues and solutions, and graduate seminars on climate physics and modeling. I am fascinated by the passage of energy and trace species through Earth's climate system. My research group studies the microphysics of trace gas, aerosol, cloud, and surface interactions with Earth's radiative, thermodynamic, and chemical budgets. We then (often) include these effects to improve climate models. Their simulations, combined with lab, field, and satellite data, help us predict and attribute features of climate and climate change. Current research includes mineral dust and carbonaceous aerosols, snow lifecycle and albedo, aerosol impacts on ocean biogeochemistry, wind-driven surface energy/mass exchange, climate-disease links, and terascale data analysis. Our aerosol, radiative transfer, and data processing models are freely available and are used by geoscience researchers world-wide.

Current and Recent Research: Dr. Zender's recent research focuses on aerosol-climate interactions. He works to understand and predict wind erosion (including soil loss); mineral and nutrient re-distribution by dust; chemical, radiative, and health effects of dust; and the fundamental physics of natural aerosol mobilization, dispersal, and deposition; and snowpack, a sensitive and efficacious modulator of Earth's climate. Others consider him a modeler, though he can swear like an observationalist. He wants to participate in field experiments. Invite him and see.

Research & Employment Opportunities

Following are the accumulated descriptions of the student, postdoctoral, professional, and technical research opportunities with our group for the past many years. Some positions are perennially open—we always welcome inquiries from passionate graduate students and post-docs. The position will state with green (actually teal) text whether it is open (i.e., inquiries are welcome). Positions that are open and funded have blinking green tags. The recently-filled positions should give you a sense of the range of opportunities within our group.

Undergraduates:

Undergraduate Students interested in Global Climate Studies: (Solicitations welcome year-round)
If you are interested in performing a summer research project or academic year independent study with our group, please contact me. See this (perennially-out-of-date) list for some sample projects.

Undergraduate Students interested in High Performance Computing: TXT (Posted November 1, 2004, Solicitations welcome year-round)
This undergraduate work-study position is available with our SEI project. Other work-study positions can be made available, please contact me if you are interested.

Graduate Students:

Graduate Students interested in Global Climate Studies: (Solicitations welcome year-round, formal applications are to the ESS graduate program)
If your research interests include the climate impacts of Aerosols, Boundary Layer Physics, Clouds, Desertification, Erosion, Microphysics, Radiative Transfer, Sea-ice, Snow, Surface Albedo, or Trace Gases, then we might find a mutually interesting research project. This (perennially-out-of-date) list will give you an idea of sample projects.

Graduate Student Researcher Cryospheric Albedo: (Posted March 1, 2012. Position Filled April 1, 2012)
We seek a graduate student interested in understanding and assessing recent changes in cryospheric albedo by intercomparing NASA satellite records and Earth System Models. See the project website for more details.
Graduate Student Researcher and/or Postdoc in Polar Freshwater Responses to Arctic Haze: (Posted June 14, 2007. Postdoc Position Filled March 1, 2008)
We seek a recent Ph.D. and/or a new graduate student interested in understanding and assessing the changes to the Arctic freshwater reservoirs and fluxes due to aerosol pollution. The response of glaciers, sea-ice, permafrost, and/or surface runoff to accelerated snow aging by pollution are of keen interest. Activities: Students will be trained to use the relevant CCSM component module(s) (e.g., CAM, CLM, CICE) necessary to project pollution impacts to the global scale. Qualifications: Students will have strong programming (Fortran9X and/or C) skills. Previous experience with UNIX/Linux-based computers is strongly recommended but not mandatory. Previous experience with data analysis (NCL, IDL, Matlab) is strongly recommended but not mandatory. Postdocs are expected to have previous experience designing and running numerical experiments with CCSM or an equivalent model. See the Full Advertisement and the project website for more details.

Multiple Graduate Student Researchers and/or Postdocs in Aerosol↔Snow↔Ice Interactions: (Posted June 14, 2007. Positions filled June 10, 2008, September 1, 2008) We seek recent Ph.D.'s and/or new graduate students to help unravel the competing feedbacks which absorbing aerosols trigger and respond to in polar regions. This project involves atmospheric, land surface, and sea-ice studies. See the Full Advertisement and the project website for more details.

Graduate Student Researcher in Computational Earth System Science: (Posted June 24, 2005. Position filled October 15, 2005))
We seek a Ph.D. student to perform data analysis research at the intersection of computational and Earth System Science. A collaborative dissertation with colleagues in the UCI Schools of Information and Computer Sciences or Engineering is encouraged. See the project website for more details.

Graduate Student Researcher in Atmosphere→Ocean Nutrient Deposition: (Posted January 14, 2005. Position filled March 15, 2005)
We seek a Ph.D. student to simulate and constrain the global atmospheric deposition of nutrients and tracers to the ocean. See the project website for more details.

Full Time Research and/or Programming:

Scientific Programming Specialist in Scientific Computing: PDF TXT (Posted March 13, 2012, Position filled June 1, 2012))
We seek a permanent, full time programmer with enthusiasm for applying advanced computing techniques to global environmental problems. You will: Improve robustness, optimize, document, and extend features of the netCDF Operators (NCO), a scientific data analysis toolkit written in C/C++ and ANTLR. Develop and maintain NCO wrappers for files stored in the NASA-standard HDF-EOS format. See the project website for more details.

Postdoctoral Researcher in Large-Scale Earth System Science Visualization: PDF (Posted December 15, 2004. Position converted to full-time researcher and filled, April 1, 2006)
The Calit2 Center of Gravity and the Earth System Modeling Facility (ESMF) at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) invite applications for a Postdoctoral Researcher in the general area of large-scale data visualization. This collaborative research project is supported by Calit2 and is aimed at the development of new visualization algorithms and techniques, enabling the real-time visualization and steering of Earth system model simulations. Particular application areas include visualization and interactive control of fast timescale small spatial scale and slow timescale large spatial scale environmental changes, e.g., dust storms and global warming, respectively.

Postdoctoral Researcher in Earth System Modeling: PDF TXT (Solicitations welcome year-round)
We seek researchers interested in using global models and pertinent data to improve our understanding of the impact of natural aerosols (mineral dust, seasalt, biogenic, volcanic) on Earth's climate system. This position is not funded. Applicants will obtain the majority of the required funding themselves and through joint proposals with us.

Scientific Programming Specialist in Distributed Data Reduction & Analysis: PDF TXT (Posted August 25, 2004, Position filled January 14, 2004))
We seek a full-time programmer to implement and oversee innovative techniques in distributed data analysis and reduction. This position is the lead software engineer in a three year NSF-funded research project to make analyzing distributed datasets easy and fast for the practicing geophysicist. The project involves exciting software technologies, and collaborations (i.e., some travel is involved) with other supercomputer centers. See the project website for more details.

Scientific Programming Specialist in Earth System Modeling: PDF TXT (Posted March 1, 2004. Position re-opened November 15, 2004. Position filled December 10, 2004.)
This position requires someone with strong modeling skills to work on coupled climate studies and fill the role of head Earth System Modeling Facility programmer.

Current Projects

Current Projects and Homepages:

“Simplifying and accelerating model evaluation by NASA satellite data” is National Aeronautics and Space Administration Cooperative Agreement (CA) NNX12AF48A, aka our ACCESS Project which is part of NASA's Advancing Collaborative Connections for Earth System Science (ACCESS) program. The ACCESS project provides the human resources to implement support in NCO for hierarchical group features in netCDF4 files and for NCO to process (using wrappers) HDF-EOS files. Groups are a powerful HDF feature that some NASA satellite datasets (e.g., HIRDLS) exploit, and that sources of netCDF data (e.g., the CMIP5 archive of climate simulations for IPCC AR5) could better exploit. By supporting groups in a generic fashion, NCO hopes to remove one of the barriers to more widespread adoption of netCDF4 features. We will analyze and intercompare snow cover and snow albedo datasets from NASA MODIS and MISR datasets (in HDF-EOS format) and NCAR CESM simulations (in netCDF format). The analysis will inform the development of wrappers for NCO commands to analyze HDF-EOS datasets.

Pictures

March 2008: CSZ analyzes snow at Col de Porte, French Alps (JPG)
February 2008: CSZ and LGGE student Morin measure snowpack properties at Col du Lautaret, French Alps (JPG)
February 2008: Sabbatical host Dominé and LGGE student Gallet measure snow reflectance at Col du Lautaret, French Alps (JPG)
November 2007: CSZ with snow measuring-laser in LGGE coldroom, Grenoble, France (JPG)
October 2007: CSZ during Congressional testimony on Black Carbon (JPG)
March 2007: Death-defying CHARM group members conquer the UCI Ropes Course (JPG album)
June 2006: CSZ at the HiperWall (JPG)
December 1999: CSZ in front of old PSRF moon (JPG)

CheatSheets

fxm: Add description of CheatSheets

Courses Taught

ESS 5: The Atmosphere

ESS 11: Climate Change and Policy

ESS H90: The Idiom and Practice of Science: Geoengineering

ESS 110: Environmental Controversies

ESS 172/272: Science Communication and Outreach

ESS 204B: The Planetary Boundary Layer

ESS 223: Earth System Physics

ESS 231: Global Hydrology

ESS 236: Radiative Processes & Remote Sensing

ESS 282: Topics in Climate: Global Climate Modeling

ESS 282: Topics in Climate: Aerosol-Cloud-Climate Interactions

ESS 286: Topics in Biogeochemistry: Chemistry, Composition, and Climate

ESS 286: Topics in Biogeochemistry: Land Surface Modeling

ESS 291: Research Seminar

ESS 298: Practicum in Earth System Science

Aerosols

We built the Dust Entrainment and Deposition (DEAD) model to simulate many aspects of the global distribution of windborne mineral dust. Aeolian deflation of dust alters air quality, radiative forcing, atmospheric chemistry, biogeochemistry, and human health over significant portions of the planet. Please contact us if you are interested in the mass distribution, size distribution, regional and seasonal cycle, optical depth, and chemical and radiative forcing of dust. We are happy to collaborate with any interested researchers on this topic. We are interested in aerosols besides dust, too! But so is everyone else these days, so we focus on naturally occuring aerosols that may have a strong anthropogenic component, e.g., sea salt, dust, biogenics. Why these aerosols? Since they have always been present, long timeseries of these aerosols are available in climate records such as ice cores. Thus we can use past records of them to learn more about the present, and visa versa. Why read dry journal articles about dust when you can see our MPEG movie?

Group Publications

(Reverse chronological order)

Tosca, M. G., J. T. Randerson, and C. S. Zender (2013), Global impact of smoke aerosols from landscape fires on climate and the Hadley circulation, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 13(10), 5227–5241, doi:10.5194/acp-13-5227-2013. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2013 by the authors)

Han, Q., C. S. Zender, J. K. Moore, C. S. Buck, Y. Chen, A. Johansen, and C. I. Measures (2012), Global estimates of mineral dust aerosol iron and aluminum solubility that account for particle size using diffusion-controlled and surface-area-controlled approximations, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 26, GB2038, doi:10.1029/2011GB004816. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (GBC) (© 2011 by the AGU)

Zender, C. S., A. G. Krolewski, M. G. Tosca, and J. T. Randerson (2012), Tropical biomass burning smoke plume size, shape, reflectance, and age based on 2001–2009 MISR imagery of Borneo, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 12, 3437–3454, doi:10.5194/acp-12-3437-2012. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (ACP) (© 2012 by the authors)

Wang, X., C. de Linage, J. Famiglietti, and C. S. Zender (2011), Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) detection of water storage changes in the Three Gorges Reservoir of China and comparison with in situ measurements, Water Resour. Res., 47, W12502, doi:10.1029/2011WR010534. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (WRR) (© 2011 by the AGU)

Allen, R. J., and C. S. Zender (2011), The role of eastern Siberian snow and soil moisture anomalies in quasi-biennial persistence of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations, J. Geophys. Res. Atm., 116, D16125, doi:10.1029/2010JD015311. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2011 by the AGU)

Tosca, M. G., J. T. Randerson, C. S. Zender, D. L. Nelson, D. J. Diner, and J. A. Logan (2011), Dynamics of fire plumes and smoke clouds associated with peat and deforestation fires in Indonesia, J. Geophys. Res. Atm., 116, D08207, doi:10.1029/2010JD015148. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2011 by the AGU)

Allen, R. J., and C. S. Zender (2011), Forcing of the Arctic Oscillation by Eurasian Snow Cover, J. Climate, 24(24), 6528–6539, doi:10.1175/2011JCLI4157.1. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JCL) (© 2011 by the AMS)

Wang, X., and C. S. Zender (2011), Arctic and Antarctic diurnal and seasonal variations of snow albedo from multiyear Baseline Surface Radiation Network measurements, J. Geophys. Res. Earth Surf., 116, F03008, doi:10.1029/2010JF001864. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2011 by the AGU)

Allen, R. J., and C. S. Zender (2010), The Effects of Continental-Scale Snow Albedo Anomalies on the Wintertime Arctic Oscillation, J. Geophys. Res. Atm., 115, D23105, doi:10.1029/2010JD014490. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2010 by the AGU)

Han, Q. and C. S. Zender (2010), Desert dust aerosol age characterized by mass-age tracking of tracers, J. Geophys. Res. Atm., 115, D22201, doi:10.1029/2010JD014155. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2010 by the AGU)

Tosca, M. G., J. T. Randerson, C. S. Zender, M. G. Flanner, and P. J. Rasch (2009), Do biomass burning aerosols intensify drought in equatorial Asia during El Niño?, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10(8), 3515–3528, http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/3515/2010. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (ACP) (© 2010 by the authors)

Wang, X., and C. S. Zender (2010), Constraining MODIS snow albedo at large zenith angles: Implications for the surface energy budget of Greenland, J. Geophys. Res. Earth Surf., 115, F04015, doi:10.1029/2009JF001436. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2010 by the AGU)

Capps, S. B., and C. S. Zender (2010), Estimated global ocean wind power potential from QuikSCAT observations, accounting for turbine characteristics and siting, J. Geophys. Res., 115, L09102, doi:10.1029/2009JD012679. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2010 by the AGU)

Wang, X., and C. S. Zender (2010), MODIS snow albedo bias at high solar zenith angle relative to theory and to in situ observations in Greenland, Rem. Sens. Environ., 114(3), 563–575, doi:10.1016/j.rse.2009.10.014. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (RSE) (© 2010 by Elsevier Science Inc.)

Capps, S. B., and C. S. Zender (2009), Global Ocean Wind Power Sensitivity to Surface Layer Stability, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L09801, doi:10.1029/2008GL037063. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (GRL) (© 2009 by the AGU)

Wang, D. L., C. S. Zender, and S. F. Jenks (2009), Efficient Clustered Server-side Data Analysis Workflows using SWAMP, Earth Sci. Inform., 2(3), 141–155, doi:10.1007/s12145-009-0021-z. BibTeX PDF (© 2009 by Springer-Verlag)

Wang, D. L., C. S. Zender and S. F. Jenks (2008): Cluster Workflow Execution of Retargeted Data Analysis Scripts, in Cluster Computing and the Grid, 2008. CCGRID '08. 8th IEEE International Symposium on. Lyons, France, 19–22 May, 2008. IEEE Computer Society, 449–458, doi:10.1109/CCGRID.2008.69. BibTeX PDF (© 2008 by IEEE)

Capps, S. B., and C. S. Zender (2008), Observed and CAM3 GCM Sea Surface Wind Speed Distributions: Characterization, Comparison, and Bias Reduction, J. Climate, 21(24), 6569–6585, doi:10.1175/2008JCLI2374.1. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JCL) (© 2008 by AMS)

Zender, C. S. (2008), Analysis of Self-describing Gridded Geoscience Data with netCDF Operators (NCO), Environ. Modell. Softw., 23(10), 1338–1342, doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2008.03.004. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (EMS) (© 2008 by Elsevier Ltd.)

Han, Q., J. K. Moore, C. S. Zender, C. Measures, and D. Hydes (2008), Constraining Oceanic Dust Deposition Using Surface Ocean Dissolved Al, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 22, GB2003, doi:10.1029/2007GB002975. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (GBC) (© 2008 by the AGU)

Wang, D. L., C. S. Zender, and S. F. Jenks (2007), Server-side parallel data reduction and analysis, in Advances in Grid and Pervasive Computing, Second International Conference, GPC 2007, Paris, France, May 2–4, 2007, Proceedings. IEEE Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4459, edited by C. Cérin and K.-C. Li, pp. 744–750, Springer-Verlag, Berlin/Heidelberg, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-72360-8_67. BibTeX PDF (© 2007 by Springer-Verlag)

Dubey, M., C. S. Zender, C. Folland, and P. Chýlek (2008), Global Warming and the Next Ice Age, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 89(12), 1905–1909, doi:10.1175/2008BAMS2359.1. BibTeX PDF (© 2008 by the AMS)

Flanner, M. G., C. S. Zender, J. T. Randerson, and P. J. Rasch (2007), Present-Day Climate Forcing and Response from Black Carbon in Snow, J. Geophys. Res., 112(D11), D11202, doi:10.1029/2006JD008003. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2006 by the AGU)

Zender, C. S., and H. J. Mangalam (2007), Scaling Properties of Common Statistical Operators for Gridded Datasets, Int. J. High Perform. Comput. Appl., 21(4), 485–498, doi:10.1177/1094342007083802. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (IJHPCA) (© 2007 by SAGE Publications)

Luo, C., C. S. Zender, H. Bian, and S. Metzger (2007), Role of ammonia chemistry and coarse mode aerosols in global climatological inorganic aerosol distributions, Atmos. Environmen., 41(12), 2510–2533, doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2006.11.030. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (Atm. Env.) (© 2006 Elsevier Ltd.)

Flanner, M. G., and C. S. Zender (2006), Linking Snowpack Microphysics and Albedo Evolution, J. Geophys. Res., 111(D12), D12208, doi:10.1029/2005JD006834. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2006 by the AGU) Poster

Zender, C. S., and J. Talamantes (2006), Climate controls on valley fever incidence in Kern County, California, Int. J. Biometeorol., 59(3), 174–182, doi:10.1007/s00484-005-0007-6. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (IJB) (© 2005 by International Society for Biometeorology) Poster

Zender, C. S., and J. Talamantes (2006), Solar Absorption by Mie Resonances in Cloud Droplets, J. Quant. Spectrosc. Radiat. Transfer, 98(1), 122–129, doi:10.1016/j.jqsrt.2005.05.084. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JQSRT) (© 2005 by Elsevier Ltd.)

Zender, C. S. and E. Y. Kwon (2005), Regional Contrasts in Dust Emission Responses to Climate, J. Geophys. Res., 110, D13201, doi:10.1029/2004JD005501. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2005 by the AGU) Poster

Flanner, M. G., and C. S. Zender (2005), Snowpack Radiative Heating: Influence on Tibetan Plateau Climate, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32(6), L06501, doi:10.1029/2004GL022076. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (GRL) (© 2005 by the AGU) (Erratum: Figure 3 caption in GRL version reverses top and bottom panel descriptions) Poster

Zender, C. S., R. Miller, and I. Tegen (2004), Quantifying Mineral Dust Mass Budgets: Terminology, Constraints, and Current Estimates, Eos Trans. AGU, 85(48), 509–512, doi:10.1029/2004EO480002. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (Eos) (© 2004 by the AGU)

Grini, A., and C. S. Zender (2004), Roles of saltation, sandblasting, and wind speed variability on mineral dust aerosol size distribution during the Puerto Rican Dust Experiment (PRIDE), J. Geophys. Res., 109(D7), D07202, doi:10.1029/2003JD004233. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2004 by the AGU)

Bian, H., and C. S. Zender (2004), Heterogeneous impact of dust on tropospheric ozone: Sensitivity to season, species, and uptake rates, Submitted to J. Geophys. Res.. BibTeX PDF (CSZ)

Bian, H., and C. S. Zender (2003), Mineral dust and global tropospheric chemistry: Relative roles of photolysis and heterogeneous uptake, J. Geophys. Res., 108(D21), 4672, doi:10.1029/2002JD003143. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2003 by the AGU)

Zender, C. S., D. Newman, and O. Torres (2003), Spatial Heterogeneity in Aeolian Erodibility: Uniform, Topographic, Geomorphic, and Hydrologic Hypotheses, J. Geophys. Res., 108(D17), 4543, doi:10.1029/2002JD003039. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2003 by the AGU) Poster

Zender, C. S., H. Bian, and D. Newman (2003), Mineral Dust Entrainment And Deposition (DEAD) model: Description and 1990s dust climatology, J. Geophys. Res., 108(D14), 4416, doi:10.1029/2002JD002775. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2003 by the AGU) (Errata in JGR version: Equation 1b parenthetical expression (1-0.858...) should be squared. Equation 10 final factor (1+u*t/u*) should be squared.)

Grini, A., C. S. Zender, and P. Colarco (2002), Saltation sandblasting behavior during mineral dust aerosol production, Geophys. Res. Lett., 29(18), 1868, doi:10.1029/2002GL015248. BibTeX PDF (JGR) (© 2002 by the AGU)

Zender, C. S., Brett Bush, Shelly K. Pope, Anthony Bucholtz, William D. Collins, Jeffrey T. Kiehl, Francisco P. J. Valero, and John Vitko, Jr. (1997), Atmospheric absorption during the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Enhanced Shortwave Experiment (ARESE), J. Geophys. Res., 102(D25), 29901–29915. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 1997 by the AGU)

Zender, C. S. and J. T. Kiehl (1997), Sensitivity of climate simulations to radiative effects of tropical anvil structure, J. Geophys. Res., 102(D20), 23793–23803. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 1997 by the AGU) (Erratum: JGR version lacks important grayscales in Figures 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 13)

Collaborations with Other Groups:

(Reverse chronological order)

Allen, R. J., S. C. Sherwood, J. R. Norris, and C. S. Zender (2012), The Equilibrium Response to Idealized Thermal Forcings in a Comprehensive GCM: Implications for Recent Tropical Expansion, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 12, 4795–4816, doi:10.5194/acp-12-4795-2012. BibTeX PDF (ACP) (© 2011 by the authors)

Huneeus, N., M. Schulz, Y. Balkanski, J. Griesfeller, S. Kinne, J. Prospero, S. Bauer, O. Boucher, M. Chin, F. Dentener, T. Diehl, R. Easter, D. Fillmore, S. Ghan, P. Ginoux, A. Grini, L. Horowitz, D. Koch, M. C. Krol, W. Landing, X. Liu, N. Mahowald, R. Miller, J.-J. Morcrette, G. Myhre, J. E. Penner, J. Perlwitz, P. Stier, T. Takemura, and C. S. Zender (2011), Global dust model intercomparison in AeroCom phase I, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11(15), 7781–7816, doi:10.5194/acp-11-7781-2011. BibTeX PDF (ACP) (© 2011 by the authors)

Mahowald, N. M., S. Kloster, S. Engelstaedter, J. K. Moore, S. Mukhopadhyay, J. R. McConnell, S. Albani, S. C. Doney, A. Bhattacharya, M. A. J. Curran, M. G. Flanner, F. M. Hoffman, D. M. Lawrence, K. Lindsay, P. A. Mayewski, J. Neff, D. Rothenberg, E. Thomas, P. E. Thornton, and C. S. Zender (2010), Observed 20th century desert dust variability: impact on climate and biogeochemistry, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10, 10875–10893, doi:10.5194/acp-10-10875-2010. BibTeX PDF (© 2010 by the authors)

Krishnamurthy, A., J. K. Moore, N. M. Mahowald, C. Luo, and C. S. Zender (2010), Impacts of atmospheric nutrient inputs on marine biogeochemistry, J. Geophys. Res. Biogeosci., 115, G01006, doi:10.1029/2009JG001115. BibTeX PDF (© 2010 by the AGU)

Krishnamurthy, A., J. K. Moore, N. M. Mahowald, C. Luo, S. Doney, K. Lindsay, and C. S. Zender (2009), Impacts of increasing soluble iron and nitrogen deposition on ocean biogeochemistry, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 23, GB3016, doi:10.1029/2008GB003440. BibTeX PDF (© 2009 by the AGU)

Gallet, J.-C., F. Dominé, C. S. Zender, and G. Picard (2009), Measurement of the specific surface area of snow using infrared reflectance in an integrating sphere at 1310 and 1550 nm, The Cryosphere, 3(2), 167–182, http://www.the-cryosphere.net/3/167/2009. BibTeX PDF (© 2009 by the authors)

Flanner, M. G., C. S. Zender, P. G. Hess, N. M. Mahowald, T. H. Painter, V. Ramanathan, and P. J. Rasch (2009), Springtime Warming and Reduced Snow Cover from Carbonaceous Particles, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 9(7), 2481–2497, http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/2481/2009. BibTeX HTML PDF (© 2009 by the authors)

Reyerson, P., M. S. Blinnikov, A. J. Busacca, D. R. Gaylord, R. Rupp, M. R. Sweeney, and C. S. Zender (2009), Phytolith Concentration and Morphotypes in Modern Soils of the Columbia Basin, USA as Indicators of Vegetation Composition and Cover, Submitted to J. Arid Env.. BibTeX PDF

McConnell, J. R., P. R. Edwards, G. L. Kok, M. G. Flanner, C. S. Zender, E. S. Saltzman, J. R. Banta, D. R. Pasteris, M. M. Carter, and J. D. W. Kahl (2007), 20th Century Industrial Black Carbon Emissions Altered Arctic Climate Forcing, Science, 317(5843), 1381–1384, doi:10.1126/science.1144856. BibTeX PDF (© 2007 by the AAAS)

Krishnamurthy, A., J. K. Moore, C. S. Zender, and C. Luo (2007), Effects of Atmospheric Inorganic Nitrogen Deposition on Ocean Biogeochemistry, J. Geophys. Res., 112, G02019, doi:10.1029/2006JG000334. BibTeX PDF (© 2007 by the AGU)

Talamantes, J., S. Behseta, and C. S. Zender (2007), Fluctuations in Climate and Incidence of Coccidioidomycosis in Kern County, California: a review, Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., 1111, 73–82, doi:10.1196/annals.1406.028. BibTeX PDF (© 2006 by the New York Academy of Sciences)

Randerson, J. T., H. Liu, M. G. Flanner, S. D. Chambers, Y. Jin, P. G. Hess, G. Pfister, M. C. Mack, K. K. Treseder, L. R. Welp, F. S. Chapin, J. W. Harden, M. L. Goulden, E. Lyons, J. C. Neff, E. A. G. Schuur and C. S. Zender (2006), The Impact of Boreal Forest Fire on Climate Warming, Science, 314, 1130—1133, doi:10.1126/science.1132075. BibTeX PDF (© 2006 by the AAAS)

Talamantes, J., S. Behseta, and C. S. Zender (2007), Statistical Modeling of Valley Fever Data in Kern County, California, Int. J. Biometeorol., 51(4), 307–313, doi:10.1007/s00484-006-0065-4. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (IJB) (© 2006 by the International Society for Biometeorology)

Washington, R., M. C. Todd, G. Lizcano, I. Tegen, C. Flamant, I. Koren, P. Ginoux, S. Engelstaedter, C. S. Bristow, C. S. Zender, A. S. Goudie, A. Warren, J. M. Prospero (2006), Links between topography, wind, deflation, lakes and dust: The case of the Bodélé Depression, Chad, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33(9), L09401, doi:10.1029/2006GL025827. BibTeX

Yoshioka, M., N. M. Mahowald, A. J. Conley, W. D. Collins, D. W. Fillmore, C. S. Zender and D. B. Coleman (2007), Impact of Desert Dust Radiative Forcing on Sahel Precipitation: Relative importance of dust compared to sea surface temperature variations, vegetation changes and greenhouse gas warming, J. Climate, 20(8), 1445–1467, doi:10.1175/JCLI4056.1. BibTeX

Mahowald, N. M., D. Muhs, S. Levis, P. Rasch, M. Yoshioka, C. S. Zender, and C. Luo (2006), Change in atmospheric mineral aerosols in response to climate: last glacial period, preindustrial, modern, and doubled carbon dioxide climates, J. Geophys. Res., 111(D10), doi:10.1029/2005JD006653. BibTeX

Cakmur, R. V., R. L. Miller, J. Perlwitz, D. Koch, I. V. Geogdzhayev, P. Ginoux, I. Tegen, and C. S. Zender (2006), Constraining the Magnitude of the Global Dust Cycle by Minimizing the Difference Between a Model and Observations, J. Geophys. Res., 111(D6), D06207, doi:10.1029/2005JD005791. BibTeX

Grini, A., G. Myhre, C. S. Zender, and I. S. A. Isaksen (2005), Model simulations of dust sources and transport in the global troposphere, J. Geophys. Res., 110(D2), D02205, doi:10.1029/2004JD005037. BibTeX PDF (CSZ) PDF (JGR) (© 2005 by the AGU)

Ammann, C. M., G. A. Meehl, W. M. Washington, and C. S. Zender (2003), A Monthly and Latitudinally Varying Volcanic Forcing Dataset in Simulations of 20th Century Climate, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30(12), 1657, doi:10.1029/2003GL016875. PDF (GRL) (© 2003 by the AGU)

Mahowald, N. M., C. Luo, J. del Corral, and C. S. Zender (2003), Interannual variability in Atmospheric Mineral Aerosols from a 22-year Model Simulation and Observational Data, J. Geophys. Res., 108(D12), 4352, doi:10.1029/2002JD002821. PDF (JGR) (© 2003 by the AGU)

Mahowald, N. M., C. S. Zender, C. Luo, D. Savoie, O. Torres, and J. del Corral (2002), Understanding the 30 year Barbados desert dust record, J. Geophys. Res., 107(D21), 4561, doi:10.1029/2002JD002097. PDF (JGR) (© 2002 by the AGU)

Collins, W. D., P. J. Rasch, B. E. Eaton, D. W. Fillmore, J. T. Kiehl, C. T. Beck, and C. S. Zender (2002), Simulation of Aerosol Distributions and Radiative Forcing for INDOEX: Regional Climate Impacts, J. Geophys. Res., 107(D19), 8028, doi:10.1029/2000JD000032. PDF (JGR) (© 2002 by the AGU)

Yu, S., C. S. Zender, and V. K. Saxena (2001), Direct radiative forcing and atmospheric absorption by boundary layer aerosol in the southeastern US: model estimates on the basis of new observations, Atm. Env., 35, 3967–3977, doi:10.1016/S1352-2310(01)00187-X. PDF (© 2001 by Pergamon Press)

Collins, W. D., P. J. Rasch, B. E. Eaton, B. Khattatov, J.-F. Lamarque, and C. S. Zender (2001), Forecasting aerosols using a chemical transport model with assimilation of satellite aerosol retrievals: Methodology for INDOEX, J. Geophys. Res., 106(D7), 7313–7336. PDF (JGR) (© 2001 by the AGU)

Cess, Robert D., Minghua Zhang, Francisco P. J. Valero, Shelly K. Pope, Anthony Bucholtz, Brett Bush, Charles S. Zender, John Vitko, Jr. (1999), Absorption of solar radiation by the cloudy atmosphere: Further interpretations of collocated aircraft measurements J. Geophys. Res., 104(D2), 2059–2066. PDF (JGR) (© 1999 by the AGU)

Extended Abstracts

Zender, C. S., F. Dominé, J.-C. Gallet, and G. Picard (2008), Darkening of Soot-doped Natural Snow: Measurements and Model. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Black Carbon in Snow Sampling, Albedo Effects and Climate Impact, Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromsø, Norway, August 13–14, 2009. (© 2009 by me) PDF

Wang, D. L., C. S. Zender, and S. F. Jenks (2007), DAP-enabled Server-side Data Reduction and Analysis, Proceedings of the 23rd AMS Conference on Interactive Information and Processing Systems (IIPS) for Meteorology, Oceanography, and Hydrology, Paper 3B.2., January 14–18, San Antonio, TX. American Meteorological Society, AMS Press, Boston, MA. (© 2007 by me) PDF

Zender, C. S., J. Talamantes, and S. Behseta (2007), Does Climate Control Valley Fever Incidence in California?, Proceedings of the 16th AMS Conference on Applied Climatology, Paper 2.2, January 14–18, San Antonio, TX. American Meteorological Society, AMS Press, Boston, MA. (© 2007 by me) PDF

Zender, C. S., and D. L. Wang (2007), High performance distributed data reduction and analysis with the netCDF Operators (NCO), Proceedings of the 23rd AMS Conference on Interactive Information and Processing Systems (IIPS) for Meteorology, Oceanography, and Hydrology, Paper 3B.4., January 14–18, San Antonio, TX. American Meteorological Society, AMS Press, Boston, MA. (© 2007 by me) PDF

Zender, C. S. and D. J. Newman, Simulated Global Atmospheric Dust Distribution: Sensitivity to Regional Topography, Geomorphology, and Hydrology. Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Aeolian Research (ICAR5) and Global Change & Terrestrial Ecosystem-Soil Erosion Network (GCTE-SEN) joint meeting, Lubbock, TX, July 22–25, 2002. (© 2002 by me) PDF

Zender, C. S. and Petr Chýlek, A Global Climatology of O2-O2, O2-N2, and (H2O)2 Abundance and Absorption, Proceedings of the Eighth Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Science Team Meeting, Tucson, AZ, March 23–27, 1998. (© 1998 by me) PDF

Posters

Too big to print! Here is a partial archive of our group's posters.

Zender, C. S., H. J. Mangalam, and D. L. Wang: Improving Scaling Properties of Common Statistical Operators for Gridded Geoscience Datasets. Presented to the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, CA, December 5–9, 2006. PDF

Flanner, M., C. S. Zender, J. Randerson, and P. J. Rasch: Present Day Climate Forcing and Response from Black Carbon in Snow, presented to the 11th Annual CCSM Workshop, Breckenridge, CO, June 20–22, 2006. PDF

Zender, Charles S., David J. Newman, and Omar Torres: Spatial Heterogeneity in Aeolian Erodibility: Uniform, Topographic, Geomorphic, and Hydrologic Hypotheses, presented to the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, CA, December 10–14, 2002. PDF

Monographs: Freely Available Community Texts (FACTs)

Our goal is to coordinate the development, solicitation, standardization, and dissemination of Freely Available Community Texts (FACTs) suitable for education and teaching in the Earth system sciences. Each FACT is a living monograph available via the World Wide Web to students and scientists anywhere to study, modify, and improve. The license ensures authors retain recognition, copyright, and review priveleges over modifications to their original material. The project contains three existing, pilot FACTs designed to educate students and researchers about radiative forcing, aerosols, and particle size distributions. We encourage contributions of new material and FACTs from students, faculty, and researchers from the international geosciences community. Find out what happens when lecture notes metastasize...

Enhanced Absorption Bibliography

This bibliography is a collation of scientific literature references relevant to the subject of enhanced absorption. It is intended as an aid for those interested in getting their feet wet in the subject. This is by no means a complete collection, as only articles for which I have (p)reprints are listed. If you would like to see a paper added, just send me a reprint. If you would like to see a paper removed, just send me $20.

Seminars

Stay on your couch! Here is a partial archive of our extra-curricular lectures, seminars and talks. Storing these on the web also helps me overcome A/V glitches. Feel free to use (with acknowledgement) the material in these talks. Classroom lectures are stored with the course homepages.

Accounting for Fire Injection Height in Climate Studies. Presented to the Fire/Carbon/Water workgroup at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO, May 29, 2007. PDF

Pretty, Nasty, Weather. Presented to the Vista Verde Elementary School First Grade Assembly, Irvine, California, February 21, 2007. PDF

High performance distributed data reduction and analysis with the netCDF Operators (NCO). Presented to the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX, January 14–18, 2007. PDF

Does Climate Control Valley Fever Incidence in California?. Presented to the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX, January 14–18, 2007. PDF

Climate Effects and Efficacy of Dust and Soot in Snow. Presented to the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, CA, December 5–9, 2006. PDF

Arctic Melt. Presented to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, UC Irvine, California, October 31, 2006. PDF

Present and Last Glacial Climate Effects of Dust and Soot in Snow. Presented to the Climate and Global Dynamics (CGD) Division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO, October 3, 2006. PDF

Snowpack-Mediated Aerosol-Climate Interactions. Presented to the Global Warming and the Next Ice Age Conference, Santa Fe, NM, July 17–19, 2006. PDF

Sunlight, Clouds, and Climate. Presented to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute UC Irvine, California, November 18, 2005. PDF

The Sun and Climate. Presented to the FOCUS Summer Science Institute, UC Irvine, California, August 1, 2005. PDF

Distributed Data Reduction and Analysis: An Overview with Applications to Californian Climate and Energy Demand. Presented to the Calit2 SURF-IT Program, Irvine, CA, August 23, 2005. PDF

Regional Contrasts in Soil Dust Emission Responses to Climate. Presented to the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS), Beijing, China, August 10, 2005. PDF

Scientific Software

I maintain some software that might be of interest to radiative transfer, trace gas, aerosol, cloud, and climate modelers. The source for most of this is directly linked below. Contact me if you are interested in any of the other programs. First, a few utilities are required to build some of this software. makdep generates Makefile dependencies for Fortran code. Download the source code, makdep.c, compile it with cc -o makdep makdep.c, and place the resulting executable in your path before using the Makefile. My Makefiles often use pvmgetarch to determine the host OS.

Tarballs available with (sometimes minimal) documentation:

CRM: CCM3 Column Radiation Model (used in Zender, 1999, and others)

DEAD: Dust Entrainment and Deposition Model (documented and used in Zender et al., 2003, and others)

IBP: Itty Bitty Processor, and IDL netCDF dataset viewer and analyzer for global GCM data

NCO: netCDF Operators

SNG: Fortran9X/200X string manipulation and GNU/POSIX-style getopt_long() command line processing

SWNB2: Shortwave Narrow Band (gas parameters from HITRAN) Model for column and snowpack radiation (documented and used in Zender et al., 1997, Zender, 1999, Valero et al., 2003)

Custom-made distributions available with (sometimes minimal) documentation:

mie: Mie scattering processor (algorithms of Wiscombe, 1979 and Bohren and Huffman, 1983; used in Zender et al., 1997, Grini et al., 2002, Zender et al., 2003, Flanner and Zender, 2005, Zender and Talamantes, 2006, Ammann et al., 2005)

Habit Preserving Microphysical Cirrus Cloud Model (documented and used in Zender and Kiehl, 1994, Zender and Kiehl, 1997)

Solar spectrum processor (documented in Labs and Neckel, 1968; Thekeakara and Drummond, 1971; Kurucz 1995; used in Zender et al., 1997, Zender, 1999)

Solar geometry routines (documented in Michalsky, 1988; used in Zender et al., 1997, Zender, 1999)

Multiple level single band two-stream radiation model (C-version of Toon et al., 1989)

Biography

[Written third person to assist over-worked, under-thanked, seminar organizers and the fourth estate. Feel free to abridge.]

Dr. Zender discovered his passion for scientific challenges, intellectual history, and poorly conceived pranks during the 1981 Summer Science Program in Ojai, CA, after his junior year in high school. (Although Carlmont inspired the movie “Dangerous Minds”, it had (has?) fantastic programs in Mathematics, Mountaineering, and Trivia). Zender entered Harvard in 1982, with financial support from his stereotypically monied, conservative, establishment-family (not!) and a lot of help in the form of a Thomas J. Watson Scholarship from IBM (where his father worked for over 40 years). He received his AB in Physics in 1990. You do the math. While in Cambridge, Zender gave weekly sky tours at the Loomis-Michael Observatory, sold Amiga computers, and worked in the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Astronomy sparked his continuing interests in atmospheric radiative transfer. He lived in an environmentally friendly co-op, the Center for High Energy Metaphysics, where he learned how to feed thirty hungry hippies (veal is a no-no, yet an exception can be made for spit-roasted goat). Eventually, baking bread with leprotic bananas and sextupling recipes in The Enchanted Broccoli Forest left him (and fellow co-op'ers) wanting more fulfilling fare. Dr. Zender discovered his field of dreams, Atmospheric Physics, in the last semester of his eight-year, three-major, undergraduate odyssey. Then romance intervened so he taught Math and Physics for a year at the College of the Atlantic (COA) before entering the Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU). Zender studied with Dr. Jeffrey Kiehl in the Climate Modeling Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). He became interested in aerosols in 1995 while traveling through India and breathing the kind of severe air pollution that alters regional climate and health. He finished his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science in 1996 by delivering the (thesis) “The Representation of Tropical Cirrus Anvils in Climate Models”. He remained at NCAR for three more years as a postdoctoral researcher, first in the Advanced Studies Program and then in the Atmospheric Chemistry Division. Dr. Zender joined the Earth System Science Department at UC Irvine in September, 1999. He collaborated with NCAR's Climate and Global Dynamics Division as an affiliate scientist from 2000–2006. He joined the French CNRS Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l'Environnement (LGGE) for a one-year sabbatical in 2007–2008.

Activism

Some popular depictions of the effects of humans on the environment are accurate and powerful while others are science fiction. Think “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Day After Tomorrow” (reviewed here). How can we protect the environment from assaults such as air pollution and (usually well-intentioned) mis-information?

Personal Activism: We must each choose how to minimize our environmental impact. An important goal is to become “carbon neutral”—to sequester as much (or more) CO2 as we emit. Our challenge as individuals is to live consistently with this goal. An easy way to begin is to change your living areas from incandescent to compact fluorescent lighting (CFL). This is a “no regrets” action—you get the same amount of light, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and cut your electricity bills. Other concrete steps you can take are listed here.

Less “in your own backyard” but equally important are environmental policies often decided in Washington. There are too many issues to follow individually so I rely on NGOs to notify me when issues that I care about are at stake. Organizations that distribute worthwhile action alerts include Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)

Professional Activism: Occasionally I help translate climate science into public perception and, hopefully, climate policy. It is difficult to know with confidence how this process starts and what it achieves societally. But participating does sharpen one's awareness to policy-relevant science. My professional participation has taken three forms: IPCC reviewing, congressional testimony, and policy-oriented workshops.

Hundreds if not thousands of scientists produce the sexennial Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate change assessments. I helped review various chapters of IPCC Working Group I's contribution to the third and fourth IPCC assessment reports (TAR and AR4, respectively). The TAR made it clear to me that such reviewing can be tedious so I applied (and was not accepted) to help draft (rather than review) AR4. Though I volunteered and was nominated to be a lead author of AR5, the IPCC did not select me. My direct contribution to AR5 will probably be in the form of reviewing a chapter or two, and perhaps analyzing and intercomparing some of the simulations.

The IPCC and Al Gore shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Partially as a result, the 2007 IPCC report had much more influence than expected. The evidence for and urgency about climate change has become undeniable largely thanks to the IPCC reports.

On 18 October 2007 I testified (oral, written) on the role of black carbon (BC) aerosol on Arctic climate to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee (OGRC) of the United States House of Representatives in Washington, DC. This was a fascinating and worthwhile experience. Interestingly, this hearing was largely due to the efforts of a “squeaky wheel” (activist) with a clear message. He built a relationship over years with the receptive Congressman who finally organized the hearing. A dedicated individual can make a tremendous difference!

With the battle for public opinion over the reality of climate change nearly won, climate scientists are more frequently organizing and participating in policy-related workshops. The Short-lived Pollutants and Arctic Climate (SPAC) workshop series is a good example. After two days of discussing the recent science on Arctic warming, we formulated a consensus of “actionable” policy recommendations.

The Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown(s) in 2011 generated a (there's no avoiding this metaphor) tidal wave of concern about radioactivity contaminating the US west coast. I wrote my first op-ed on the relative menace of long-range radioactive fallout vs. locally emitted soot. I plan to do more opinion pieces in the near future.

CGI tests

Formtest

MathML tests

MathML converter

\sin^{\frac{1}{2}} (x^{2})

PHP tests

phptest

Math tests

Euler's equation:

\, \varepsilon_0

Charlie “my surname is zender” Zender