Bill Gates calls for a more equitable world in an AAAS Annual Meeting plenary address. [IMAGE: ALEX CAGAN]

A recorded video presentation by Professor Yan Zhongwei of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was delivered at the 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Seattle, USA on February 16, 2020. Yan had to cancel his travel to Seattle one week before the meeting due to the novel coronavirus outbreak in China. About 30 other registrants from China, including 10 PIOs of CAS institutes, were also unable to attend because of travel restrictions.

Although not able make it to the meeting in person, Professor Yan was still proud to remotely attend what was the first scientific session organized by Chinese atmospheric scientists at an AAAS annual meeting. The session, entitled “Climate Change and Climate Extremes: Precipitation and Projections”, was proposed by IAP executive Director General Professor Zhou Tianjun in 2019 and approved by the AAAS organizing committee. Zhou invited Doctor Michael Wehner of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Professor Albert Klein Tank of the UK Met Office Hadley Centre to join Professor Yan as session panelists.

In the video talk, Yan introduced IAP’s research on how the world’s most populous regions will be exposed to more record-breaking climate extremes. According to Wehner, who kindly played the video of Yan’s talk, “the session was quite successful. In fact one of the attendees specifically asked me to thank Zhongwei for his interesting presentation.” Despite the fact that it was the final session of the program, it was well attended. Discussion afterwards focused on climate tipping points, which was also interesting.

In later emails, Wehner and Tank thanked Yan and the IAP for the opportunity. Both felt it was a good chance to get across the message of the impact of climate change to an American audience and the media.

Source: The Institute of Atmospheric Physics,

Chinese Academy of Sciences