MILAF international early career workshop, Oct 2023, Denmark

The next MILAF mentoring workshop for early career scienctists will take place from 1-4 October at the Sandbjerg Manor in Denmark. As for previous workshops, this event will address land-atmosphere feed backs mediated by microorgransisms. This session of the MILAF workshop will focus on these interactions in the Arctic.

Details about the motivation for this MILAF workshop are described below. Information about the application procedure can be downloaded HERE

Candidates for this workshop from the life, physical and social sciences should be early in their career* and able to demonstrate that they have extraordinary potential to contribute to the goals of this workshop in terms of their motivation, skills and professional context. Successful candidates will be eligible for scholarships to partially cover costs of attending the workshop.

Deadline for applications: 1 March 2023

CONTEXT

The Arctic region is extremely sensitive to climate changes and has experienced a much higher temperature increase compared to the global average, which is closely linked to feedbacks between the atmospheric processes and the rapid loss of sea ice and terrestrial ice. Thus the Arctic radiative balance is heavily affected by the changes in the albedo of the icy/snowy surfaces and the changes in the albedo which are associated with cloud thickness, lifetime, and optical properties. Microorganisms have progressively been in focus as key components of the Arctic climate system and have unexpected consequences for the Arctic ecosystems. In particular, biological aerosols have been implicated in a variety of biophysical and geochemical transformations both during their airborne dispersal, where they exert major influence on cloud formation and optical properties, and after their deposition, establishment and growth on icy surfaces, where they are a major factor controlling the albedo and melting rate of terrestrial ice. As major emphasis has been placed on the cryosphere by the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report, this is a key time to understand the dynamics of these microbially-driven processes as well as whether there is a way to counteract the resulting negative consequences. By gathering top researchers together with rising early career scientists within the fields of aeromicrobiology, microbial cryo-ecology, ice physics and modeling from around the world, we aim at exploiting the ongoing momentum with a dynamic exchange of state-of-the-art developments and ideas.

SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGES ADDRESSED IN THIS WORKSHOP

Workshop participants will have the opportunity to be actively involved in:

• Building contexts for interdisciplinary research that integrates mathematics, life sciences and physical sciences.
• Defining the grand challenges for Earth System sciences for the coming decades.
• Specifying initial goals to meet these challenges
• Networking with current and upcoming leaders who will address these challenges.
• Increasing dialogues that involve economics and social sciences to favour the practical application of new discoveries.

PROGRAM & ORGANIZATION

Supported by the Novo Nordisk foundation, twenty extraordinary individuals early in their career will be invited to meet with a group of established scientists (“mentors”) and other leaders active in fields related to microbial ecology of cryosphere and atmosphere and how they link to albedo and the climate system. The workshop will focus on the atmospheric dispersal of microorganisms, their establishment on ice sheets, the consequent changes in the surface and cloud ice influencing albedo of these surfaces, and the changes in the Arctic landscape that could impact all these processes. The workshop will include some formal presentations by senior scientists to set the stage for interdisciplinary discussion, but will favor interactive discussion and brainstorming.

MENTORS:

– Alexandre M. B. Anesio, Aarhus University, DK

– Brent Christner, Louisiana State University, USA

– Jessie M. Creamean, Colorado State University, USA

– Catherine Larose, Université de Lyon, France

– Erik Thomson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

– Davide Martinetti, INRAE, France

– Cindy Morris, INRAE, France

– Tina Šantl-Temkiv, Aarhus University, DK

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