Cloud makers: How Alaska's seasons paint the sky
7:00 – 8:30 pm MDT
The Alaska ecosystem is changing, but some of the most powerful drivers of its weather are completely invisible to the naked eye. From spring tree pollen wafting off rainforests to summer microscopic life blooming in glacial fjords, living particles drift into the sky to become the 'seeds' that create clouds and fog. Yet we have very limited understanding of how these living ingredients are shaping local weather.
Join NSF NCAR researchers Yingxiao Zhang and Kristina Black, and UCAR COMET Deputy Director Wendy Gram as they share results from the first year of a multi-year expedition through the Alaska sub-Arctic in partnership with HX Expeditions. Learn how ocean and air samples collected reveal a shifting atmosphere, how these findings are improving weather models, and what a fast-changing sub-Arctic means for environments worldwide.
Yingxiao Zhang
Dr. Yingxiao Zhang is an ASP Postdoctoral Fellow in the Atmospheric Chemistry Observations & Modeling (ACOM) Laboratory at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. Her research focuses on aerosol–cloud interactions, biosphere–atmosphere interactions, and Earth system modeling. She combines field observations with weather and Earth system models to investigate how ecosystems respond to changing environmental drivers and how these changes, in turn, reshape atmospheric composition and weather. She holds a PhD in Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering from the University of Michigan.
Wendy Gram
Dr. Wendy Gram is a community ecologist who is passionate about science, data and learning. She has worked at the interface of science and people using science for over 30 years. Over the course of her career, I’ve had the opportunity to integrate research with field courses, citizen science projects, conservation, and public engagement from K to gray. Wendy has been at UCAR since 2019 and currently serves as Deputy Director of the COMET Program in the UCAR Community Programs (UCP) division of UCAR. Wendy holds a PhD in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Missouri and did her postdoctoral work at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California Santa Barbara.
Kristina Black
Dr. Kristina Black is also a Postdoctoral Fellow in the CGD Laboratory at NSF NCAR. Her research focuses on how marine wildlife respond to environmental change by integrating genomic data with earth system model outputs. She currently focuses on Alaska and collaborates with Indigenous communities to study animals that are important for food security in the Arctic- such as bearded seals and salmon. She holds a PhD in Ecology from UT-Austin and an MS in Ecology from UW-Madison.