I was not planning on attending AGU this fall in San Francisco but then received two invited talks; one on climate prediction and the other on how warming of the Arctic is impacting weather in the midlatitudes. Talks are very hard to come by at AGU, with 22,000 participants, so two invited talks seemed like an opportunity not to be squandered.
The first talk was Wednesday afternoon in the session on climate prediction that morphed into a session on the changing cryosphere (snow and ice). As it turned out the talk was well attended and in the audience were more than a few AER colleagues showing their support including Dr. Jason Furtado, Nadya Vinogradova and Bob Morris. And at my second talk it was nice t o see AER alum Rick Rosen. A few press people showed up as well, hoping that I might show the AER winter forecast.
The second session was an hour long at the very end of the day on Thursday, which included four invited speakers. The other three speakers spoke about sea ice decline and I presented on Siberian snow cover. I thought it was a very interesting. Sea ice was definitely “hot” at this year’s AGU and the sea ice crowd had the momentum but felt that I held my own. The talks were followed up with a panel discussion and as one audience commented to me afterwards “…you really seemed confident answering questions, like no one was going to stump you.” If there is any doubt how well received my talks were at AGU, San Francisco decided to name a street after me.
While at AGU, I received three more invitations for seminars; University of Texas, Austin, Penn State University and Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany. Just think, three more blogging opportunities!