Ken Carslaw is a professor in the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science at the University of Leeds. His research has improved our understanding of atmospheric aerosol particles and the effects they have on climate. His publications cover much of this field, including natural aerosols, aerosol formation, dust and biogeochemistry, ice-nucleating particles, radiative forcing, palaeo-aerosols and stratospheric aerosols. His group was among the first developers of a global model of aerosol microphysics (GLOMAP) which is now part of the UK Earth System Model. His research increasingly focuses on tackling the persistent uncertainty in aerosol effects on climate by applying novel statistical techniques and extensive observations.
https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/see/staff/1196/professor-ken-carslaw-frs
Anthropogenic aerosols cool the planet and have offset a substantial fraction of greenhouse gas warming for substantial periods of the last century. Although global aerosol cooling is slowly diminishing, accurate quantification of the effect is vital for understanding the pathway to the 1.5 or 2.0 degree Paris targets. In this presentation I will discuss why aerosol effects on global climate are so hard to quantify and how we might achieve the “maximum feasible reduction” in uncertainty. The first task is to properly compute the uncertainty and diagnose the causes, rather than relying on small sets of simulations that prevent statistical analysis.
