Well, good evening and welcome to Portland Rising. I'm Marion McHugh from the Portland Phoenix and each month the Portland Phoenix produces with our friends at the Portland Media Center a show focusing on news, interviews, arts and entertainment each month and we have some very interesting guests tonight. We have Doug Rooks who's a veteran political reporter in the state of Maine and the author of several books including his most recent which is First Franco, Albert Bellevue in Law, Politics and Love and he's going to be talking about an issue he's written about recently for the Portland Phoenix, the challenges and there are many facing CMP and a little later we're going to hear from Greg Levinsky who's a Portland native and nearing alumnus who's written for the Boston Globe and the Detroit Free Press and who's now writing a sports column for the Phoenix and he's going to be writing about talking about the return of tackle football so we'll get we'll get to Greg a little later and Doug can you tell us what you think are the big challenges facing CMP? You know it's really kind of hard to keep up with them all but in the simplest possible terms there will definitely be a referendum on the ballot in November just two months that would essentially decertify state approvals for a power line that is currently under construction to Canada from northern Maine that will then bring electricity from Hydro-Cobbex many dams on the James Bay down to the state of Massachusetts and this has caused multiple issues involving the legislature, the Attorney General's office, the Governor's office and it can get very confusing even for veteran reporters like myself. For instance the second referendum which is virtually certain now that will be on the ballot next year and that is a very different kind of measure it's not just about a power line or one construction project it's about the very existence of CMP central main power which has been you know Maine's public utility premier public utility for more than a hundred years so it's a very big deal and essentially it would take management and ownership away from the investors who have always supported this company and financed it and it would turn it over to the state of Maine and would create a customer-owned thing to replace both CMP and Verisant the former bag or hydro network which collectively served 95% of the people of Maine so it's a very big deal and most mainers haven't the clue about what it might mean and be and you know it's almost getting more complicated from the very beginning because just yesterday CMP or at least people who backed CMP's position have announced they're going to do their own referendum question which if I understand it correctly if we do decide on a consumer-owned utility publicly financed they will then have another referendum to decide whether we want to borrow the huge amount of money billions of dollars that would be required to do this so who knows where that's going so I think we would all be well advised to focus more on the current issue before us because that's what we're going to have to vote on in two months so that issue is a fascinating there's a fascinating collection of interest groups and supporters on both sides and they're very strange bedfellows so that might be a good place to start okay the hydro kebek line is the result of roughly 15 years of effort by massachusetts which was one of the very first states to commit to renewable energy main has done this we passed a big law in 2019 to do this but massachusetts did it long ago their problem has actually been doing it you know they had the law in the books and they have solicited multiple proposals to do this now the one that they ended up picking a couple years ago was originally supposed to go through new hampshire in other words a line from hydro kebek's dams down through new hampshire called the northern pass project and and then in terminating in massachusetts the same way the cmp line will do the problem there was they wanted to run the line through the white mountain national forest one of the premier recreation areas in the northeast and frankly that was too much even for new hampshire they had a special siting committee which unanimously rejected it however anticipating that result massachusetts already had a backup plan and we're the backup plan okay theoretically they could have run it through vermont new hampshire or main and the irony here is they have a permitted route through new vermont already unfortunately since it goes under lake champagne it's extremely expensive so they naturally preferred the main route which goes through the northern main woods an area that to opponents of the line is pristine wilderness and to the supporters of the line is industrial forest land you take your pick i think we can all agree and it's a very remote area of main very unlikely to be seen by most mayors today so it's really almost like what do you think about what's going on up there do you see wilderness do you see industrial forest land that's been producing timber for 250 years is a real tough one and the voters are going to have a lot on their plate when they decide yes or no so of course as usual the referendum is not that simple it's partly the result of i'm trying to be quick about summarizing this but it's important to know this the massachusetts proposal which got 100 of the power from hydro kebek was not very popular in new england and a number of the environmental groups including the conservation law foundation which does support the line with conditions and some of those conditions were actually embodied in the puc order approving it but they really were disappointed because they thought originally that it would be a mix of sources you know some hydropower from canada but a lot of renewable energy projects in northern main which is right near the line and those projects are on the drawing board and they could still be built but they weren't awarded by massachusetts so they'd have to be separate constructed with approvals from the state of main so it gets very confusing and complicated because you have environmental groups on both sides of this issue you have republican legislators on both sides of this issue you even have a couple of democrats who support the line even though most legislators don't and governor janet mills who probably is the most important voice here does support the line as does her predecessor call the page who's running for governor so you know it's a real tough one and i think the biggest problem for the voters is just sorting all this out you know it really is very confusing so i think at that point i could probably use a question from the host yeah a couple of things that are striking that you've mentioned in your story the retro activity provisions that are in the referendum as well as the fact as you alluded to two separate questions that um that you know gas companies fossil fuels as you said strange bedfellows have aligned on either side in terms in terms of pouring money uh into this very very um controversial question are those things you can talk to i it is that because a lot of people are worried about the retro activity provision and how important is that well i think it's i don't think it's very important to the voters because they're just going to give a yes or no verdict i think it's really for the voters about do you think hydro power from canada is a good idea it has some benefits remain we clearly get some benefits but most of the benefits flow to massachusetts indirectly we get cleaner air as a result because if hydro power flows to massachusetts they will shut down a lot of fossil fuel plants particularly natural gas and that affects our air so in some ways it's a win for the environment but it's it's it's complicated so i think the um the voters will probably be thinking okay is hydro power from canada despite its flaws better than continuing to run natural gas plants in new england that would be a crucial consideration for them the retro activity part is necessary to the cause of the people who wrote the referendum because they they tried to get a similar question on the ballot last year and the spring court said that's not a properly framed question we're striking it from the ballot so it's come back in a different form which includes these retro activity clauses they're basically two they would say the puc approvals which were relatively recent 2019 i believe going into 2020 we would you know say that that order approving the line is null and void the other one is really more interesting it's from a 2014 lease granted through the lapage administration that allows this line to run across public reserved lands now we should you know this is a concept that many mayors are fallen from new rift so you have to understand public reserve land is simply publicly owned land that's managed for the benefit of public it is not a state park we don't have any state for us so it's not that it's simply land that's held by the state for the benefit of the of the highest and best used remainers now in 2014 with very little ado the administration the page administration got the bureau of public lands to approve this leak lease saying there was no significant impact on the existing values of that land which is very remote i mean it's not like anybody goes there very often so however the lease in the estimation of many people was very poorly done and they didn't provide much of the way of reasoning so when janet mills took office in 2019 as a supporter of the line she basically got the bureau public lands to issue a revised lease so both of those leases would have to be revoked for you know for the line to be actually cancelled otherwise you get into all this legal stuff where one agency is saying yes others are saying no so they kind of went for the whole enchilada and said all these leases are cancelled but there's also a current court case in which there has been a ruling at the superior court level that the lease was improperly granted however the supreme court of main which will probably rule before november on this question may in fact reverse that so you know it's it's a headscratcher but i do think voters would be well advised to just think about the question of let you know do you think this is a good idea or not and then allow the courts to do their job if they need to clearly if the referendum is turned down all those legal questions i just mentioned our boot but if it is approved you can be guaranteed that cmp will be in court contesting you know the terms of the referendum whether it's whether it's really a properly grafted law and i you know many people who study this for a long time and are not passionately involved on either side say you know it's a really tough stretch to imagine this referendum will be constitutional because primarily of that retroactivity provision so it's a long answer to a short question but that's where we are these days and i think you said they're still cutting in that area because there's been no injunction to prevent it even though justice murphy did rule police was correct there is cutting going on there was a separate case a different court case before the federal court appeals in boston first circuit and they did grant temporary injunction but then the when the full court heard the case they lifted the injunction the court is going ahead they are clearing their widening section from lewiston to the contested area the new cutting that has been going on they're putting up polls and all that and they are going ahead uh last i heard they've probably done about 20 percent of the new section of the 53 mile line to canada so that is going ahead the court case that justice murphy ruled on is about the lease only it does not it's not stop them from constructing and cmp for whatever reasons they have decided to go ahead with construction and i think their belief is the fact that they're providing a lot of jobs and in an area of high unemployment may sway a few voters to their side and but if they lose the case they're they're out a lot of money clearly they've invested a lot of money in a project that then is belly up so you know there are a lot of risks on both sides here it's very interesting thank you we've about used up the time and if there's any final thoughts that you have to to share or observations my final thought is we may be asking the voters to do too much through the referendum process normally these big complex issues are handled at the legislature and we have an odd situation where the governor and legislators of her own party are very much at odds here and that's a difficult situation normally this would be and the legislature did pass this you know they didn't pass the well no they earlier they did try to shut down the line and they were unsuccessful because Janet Mills vetoed those bills she also vetoed the public power bill this year and i think you know in some ways for our system to work effectively we've got to get those people back on the same page because you know the legislature and the governor ultimately are the best um are the best places to resolve these issues the voters are going to have a tough time and i would not be surprised if we wake up in the day after the election say oh my god what did they do but you know i'm not sure that voters really should be asked to make such complex decisions that that's my thought thank you duck that's very interesting and helpful as as we approach november you're welcome turning the page very dramatically uh we have greg levinsky greg is our our sports columnist and greg um we're talking about tackle football yeah for sure well it's back um main was one of very few states uh last year that totally eliminated tackle football um because of coven of course there was some seven on seven flag football which uh served its purpose for a lot of kids but i think tackle football being back is really good for a very large subset of kids which are the linemen the big the big fellas up front both offensively defensively those don't exist in seven on seven football so it's great that those kids can get another opportunity to get back out there and represent their schools um i know that tackle football obviously comes with its risks of course uh with concussions and and injury and all that but i do think it's it's important to focus on the perspective of looking at high school football as a community event something that people rally around that towns rally around student bodies get excited for and i know i'm looking forward to getting out to the Deering Portland game uh and not cheering on my alma mater but uh coming up with something interesting uh for later in the week and you know it's funny a few months ago it seems like tackle football coming back was going to sort of usher in this sense of what we thought was normalcy um and now maybe not the case uh with you know delta variant and coven 19 but i think something that is wonderful is hopefully that tackle football can serve as an outlet for a lot of these kids uh as our times continue to be pretty crazy and unpredictable i think is the best way we can describe it you said it and it's a very tough time for these kids they've just gotten back into school a lot of them because they weren't even in school for much of last year which was something and to you know it's like what does it mean you know for these kids now to be back in school and to have their extracurriculars whether it's soccer or football is incredibly meaningful um and i hope i i guess so far even with the variants out there things are moving forward it seems so yeah i mean i think that there are certain obviously protocols in place there have been quite a few games that were canceled in week one i think something like eight games or eight teams were impacted by covid but some games canceled across the state so it's obviously something that has to be watched for at all times and it's something that is sort of in the back pocket or in the back of the minds of coaches athletic directors student athletes parents that never was around before for high school football um so it definitely or high school sports i guess last year had to deal with it so there's some sort of uh idea of how to how to roll with it but um like like we all know watching you know reading uh the the delta variant and and perhaps others are a little bit different than than what we experienced even a year ago today um that being said i think that a lot of these schools uh had great success with staying open last year uh with whatever they chose to do in their hybrid model or having kids back you know three or four days a week one or two days a week whatever it was um schools did find a way uh it may not have been perfect and it may not have been easy i'm sure it wasn't easy um but i think that it's definitely inspired a lot of resiliency for kids and staff members so um you know it's like like we know uh anything can change at the drop of a hat you know on a moment's notice uh but hopefully you know more good can come out of it than than the risk the the portland school system seems is very steady this year on getting kids back into school even though there's you know there's been some disagreement people think there's not enough careful protocols so let's let's hope that they're able to continue but i'm wondering i have to admit i've never been to a dearing to the Thanksgiving day game so perhaps you can and i know it means a lot obviously you know it's funny i was talking about this with one of my friends the other day and um i am a what third generation dearing alum um my dad went there his two brothers my cousin two my cousins my sister my grandfather who's turning 95 soon um so it definitely runs in the family uh something that my dad tells me about uh was that the dearing Portland Thanksgiving day game used to get like 20,000 people or a huge huge amount of people and now it doesn't um and that's really unfortunate every year it seems like there's talk of canceling it um and that's too bad because the players really care um i think it's unfortunate that the community doesn't necessarily rally behind their schools with with the pride that that they used to and i think there's obviously multiple reasons for that people move away more for jobs or whatnot but i think that it's really important and maybe this pandemic can be a turning point where people get more excited about what's right in front of them and i really hope that people do go out because the kids care so much i know the new dearing coach john hardy is a dearing alum he graduated i think in 2011 so i know it will mean a lot to him and those kids um and for the people that still do enjoy it it does mean a lot i just hope that more people can uh realize or enjoy what what's right in front of them because it's i think that when people go to high school games and support high school athletic events it elevates the play and makes it more fun for the kids it's fun as a spectator or as a reporter it's enjoyable to see the kids competing hard and having their attention it just goes back and forth and really complements each other so you know i i hope that uh i hope that high school football and every other sport gets good crowds i think it's important to share the stories of the student athletes especially i mean the coaches too but i think especially of the kids it's really important to get their stories out there so people can uh have people's root for i think it's really awesome to have someone local nearby to root for you know and and when it's when you live on dark mystery and you can walk five minutes Fitzpatrick stadium and show up and you know be even for a quarter um it would mean something to kids and parents and and coaches so i think for me i have you know portland sports mean a lot to me personally um because of i think because of my dad and uh my family uh even though none of us are very good athletes we can all admit that but we do love sports um and i hope that people uh i hope there's like a renaissance or resurgence of people caring because i think it's really important builds community um and i like to see sports as a lens to you know everyday life as a microcosm of everyday life and i i really do you know have faith that people will return uh to these things sort of renewed as i mean i think we have in everything uh whether it was our first trip back to the grocery store or our first time back in the restaurant or whatever um i think that we all have come away with relishing things that we have access to so um you know let's hope that translates to uh local sports well gregg i know you like sports at all levels and you know you've written about the red socks or and the sea dogs you know for the globe but there's something about and the people i know and the writers i know who are very interested in there's something about high school sports that is really means a lot and as you said sort of telling the stories of those kids and what it means to them um and i think that's that's that's great that's very interesting and very meaningful when do you have um i suppose it's too early to like handicap what are the top teams here or who you're looking at yeah that's tough i mean honestly i'm really with this column and in general i'm really want to be focused on the portland schools if i can portland during you know maybe some chevrus and wainfleet obviously the kids that go to casco bay because i think that something that happens with high school sports in general is there are so many stories that go untold because i bet you know on a 60 person football team i bet 50 of the kids maybe not 50 40 whatever of the kids have a story that would be worth publication somewhere so i think that it's really critical that we share these stories because they're otherwise they're just never getting out um and you never know who it can help um it really means a lot to me personally uh when when a family is pleased by a story and they share it not because it's my work but because it demonstrates pride for the story that was told and they wanted people to to get out there and it might help someone depending on the subject matter of the story and it doesn't have to be necessarily something sad it can be about someone's business they started or something they do on the side and someone might say oh like a little kid might say mom i can do that too i think it's really important that that little kids get role models and hopefully you know if they read a story about a kid at portland high school or they hear about it their parents read about it and say hey did you know about this kid uh who's a junior at portland and they might you know get excited i know when i was little i had kids and and athletes who were in high school in the local area that i looked up to i don't think i'm sure they didn't know that i looked up to them and i don't know what a lot of them are doing today a lot of them probably didn't even play in college um but i think that everyone can find a role model uh in their own high school next door so great well thank you that's a great description and we're really looking forward to having your coverage and your columns in the phoenix uh fall goes on so thank you very much and thank you all uh for being with us tonight please join us please join us next month when we will have another edition of portland rising thank you


Protocols for international visitors while in Zindlusha. The following protocols are established to guide the stay of all guests while on island in order to mitigate any possible spread of infection. During the first 14 days, visitors are allowed to patronize approved beaches, restaurant, sea and land excursions and sites and attractions. All visits are scheduled and pre-arranged by their respective accommodation providers. During this period, all visitors will be transported to and from the certified sites using only COVID-19 certified tourism transportation after the first 14 days. If any visitor wishes to stay on island beyond the 14-day period, they must apply for and receive a Health Clarence Certificate from the Ministry of Health. Visitors will be allowed to travel, be out in the wider public and patronize local businesses unsupervised once Health Clarence Certificates have been received. During the entire stay, visitors must wear their mask whenever they are in public places and maintain the mandatory six-speed distancing from others.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com. Yes, another ultimate collection break. Brand new release. People seem to love this. We flew through these eight box inners all the way through Pick Your Team Eight really quickly. We don't have any more. Maybe we'll try to get some more. Big thanks to everybody right here. David Larson, Last About Mojo, Blue Jackets. And thanks everyone here for getting into the action. Really appreciate it. I think Jason Jaspy has some personal boxes available on our personal site. Instagram Live Only at Jaspy's Breaks on Instagram. Check out Instagram Live at Jaspy's Breaks. At Jaspy's Breaks, Instagram Live. They say in advertising, you got to say it like three times for people to get into their heads. Maybe even more. That's at Jaspy's Breaks on Instagram. Instagram Live Only at Jaspy's Breaks on Instagram. Check us out there, Instagram Live at Jaspy's Breaks. All right, here we go. Next, good luck. Yeah, I pulled a shield earlier today. I was pretty excited about that. I forgot who it was, but it was nice. I'd love to pull another one. Thanks. There's Emile Benstrom, Blue Jackets, Last About Mojo. It's cause some good ad voice. Ryan H, yeah. Wait till we do ad reads in our group breaks. This break brought to you by Subway Eat Fresh. Here's Subway Eat Fresh box number one. We'll sponsor every single box. 53 out of 175, there's Root Heinz. Ultimate Rookie's autographed. Dallas Stars, that's gonna be for Jarell Taylor. Yeah, those intro autos are cool. All right, and we, oh, we get three autographs? Usually there's just a relic on the bottom. Yeah, auto, auto, auto, nice box. Sean Monahan is 27 out of 75. Calgary Flames, Sean Matic. And there's Adam Boquist for Chicago, Jason Wainer with that. That was pretty amazing. Yeah, Josh Proust the other night called a, called a Louise Robert autograph. So this time he's gonna call, and he had the White Sox. And this time he's gonna call a Connor McDavid in this box right here. This is the next box. And he has the oil, so let's see what happens. Will his sorcery streak continue? I mean, once was pretty amazing. Twice? Two thick cards in the middle. We've got Austin Matthews, Jersey and auto. I've heard of him. He's pretty good. Toronto Maple Leafs, Rick Serrano. We might have made up for that, made up for that NT box back there. Oh, that's on the inside of the top loader. There we go. Riffer saying this is an update card. Oh yeah, look at that, 1718. I was like, this looks different from this set. There you go, that's pretty cool. That's really cool. Ooh, and nice, we got signature masterpiece. Love that gold foil border right here. Andres Svednikov. Nice, Carolina. Jeremy Port with the Hurricanes. Rock you like a hurricane. Right, and we've got Martin Fairvairy. 26 out of 399. It's just gonna say it confidently. Maybe it's Ryan H with that one. And we've got, oh, this is an autograph. I didn't realize that. Ed to Louis Shryanin. Ultimate introductions, Silver, Ink, Auto. Kinda just looked like a scribble on the bottom. There you go, sorry about that. All right, once again, Carolina, Jeremy Port with that one. Next box, Fairvairy. I'll say that 20 times in the mirror. When I wake up tomorrow. Fairvairy, Fairvairy. How now, brown cow? How now, brown cow? The quick brown fox jumped over the, we got two base cards right here, 93 out of 299. Daniel, you're tykin' for San Jose, Steve Locke. And we got, there we go, we got Leon Bergman to 299. This is an autograph for San Jose. That'll be for Steve Locke. And Dodgers are looking real floppy in this game. And we've got a rally down here. There's Oliver Wallström, Islanders. 138 to 399 for Kip Kip, Hurray, and the Islanders, the Isles. And that's Jerome Carlson. Yeah, Carlson for the Caps. All right, Peccarine is gonna help us out right here. We've got Brandon Gignac. Ultimate introductions, Autograph. That silver ink really pox on that sort of color design there. Devils, New Jersey Devils, Sean Maddock. We got Brent Burns, two out of 50. It's quite a beard there. Is that a playoff beard? Sharks, that's gonna go to Steve Locke, Shark Week. And then behind Peccarine should be a relic. It is, Ultimate Icons, Mark Shifley. Winnipeg Jets, that's for Sean Maddock. And there's Peccarine to 149, Preds. And Nashville, that'll be for William. Oh, that's how Brent Burns normally looks. Yeah, yeah, if we're nitpicking, this is a good looking set, but yeah, some of the edges or corners aren't as sharp as I'd want them to be right out of the pack. There's Leon Bergman again to 299. The thinner card seemed to look really sharp, but some of the thicker cards. All right, that goes to San Jose, Steve Locke. We've got Jersey and Autograph, 81 out of 125, Andrey Shvednikov. I kind of like the photography in this Ultimate Access set right here. Carolina, Jeremy Port, wrinkling on the top loader there, or the penny sleeveless. Even that out. Yeah, see, all right, we've got Leon Bergman again, 189 out of 3, 99. Yeah, a lot of sharks in this one, Shark Week. That goes to Steve Locke. Good play, dust off your Kabert Ruiz rookie autos, baseball fans, showing off the arm there. That's not supposed to be a strong suit. Hit a home run in his debut. Go Dodgers. The Taylor Abramoff to 299, Ottawa. That'll be for Nick Galvin. All right, there's Cody Glass down there, no auto on that. There's an auto on this one, Ultimate Introductions. Trevor Moore, Trevor Moore, Toronto Maple Leafs. Rick Serrano, there you go, Rick. Trying to work in a Roger Moore joke in there, but can't think of one right now. We got three color patch and autograph. There's Noah Dobson for the Islanders. Eight out of 49, nice color in that patch. That's gonna go to Kip Kip Hurray with the Islanders. Nice, good to see a Kip. We got Carter, Carter, Verigay, Verigay, Verie, Lightning, Zap, going to Brad. If I need more 180s, I might. Cody Glass 25, that'll go to Aaron and the Golden Knights. Kip's like, I have no clue what these people are. That's okay, Kip, as long as you're getting people. As long as we're able to mail you some of these people, that's the key. Doesn't matter who they are. As long as you're getting stuff mailed to you. All right, there's Steve Beiserman up top to 99 and we got Mario Ferraro. More sharks, shark week. That goes to Steve Locke. We got Ryan O'Reilly.  With that one.  There's Nathan Bastion, 285 to 399. New Jersey Devils, Relic, Sean Maddock. And there's the Steve Beiserman for the Red Wings to 99. That'll be for Detroit, Eric J. And the final box, Picker Team Eight. We don't have any more ultimate collection, not at the moment for jaspeakcasebrakes.com. However, Jason Jaspy on Instagram Live, at Jaspy's Brakes, I believe does have some personal boxes left if you have the itch. And then I'm sure we'll be on the lookout for more to group breaks. So keep an eye out on Jaspy'scasebrakes.com in the future. All right, thanks everybody. Picker Team Eight almost done. We've got Rangers. We've got Igor Shirsterkin, 152 out of 225. Rangers. That's gonna go to Ryan, Ryan L. And the Rangers. And we've got a nice Bruin, Trent Frederick. See good? Another patch, an autograph. Seven out of 99 for William and Boston. By the way, future goalie for the Rangers, Riffer is saying. Here's Trent Frederick for William. Boston Bruins. And the relic on the back is Brady Keeper. That's a Keeper, 663 out of, 663. 363 out of 399. This Keeper goes to Nick Galvin. Florida Panthers. Love it, says William. Nice. And there's Jonathan Bruin to 149. There you go, Canadians with that one. And there you go, folks. Thanks for getting in. We had a great day and night with all this ultimate collection. We'll try to get some more. Keep an eye out on Jaspy'scasebrakes.com. I'm Joe. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.


Welcome to The Snap. This is the segment where we answer frequently asked questions in a very rapid-fire format, so let's get right into it. In this week's episode of The Snap, we're going to be showing you how to travel discreetly with your VapCap. There are many different ways to travel with a vaporizer. However, the VapCap makes it particularly easy due to the ease of disassembly and reassembly, as well as the portability of the device. Today, I'm going to share with you some of my personal suggestions on how to travel with your VapCap. But regardless of the method, the most important thing is to ensure that your VapCap is properly cleaned before you travel. If you've never cleaned your VapCap and you need to learn how to do so, be sure to check out the videos here and we'll wait for you to get back. Now that you've deep cleaned your device, it's time to see if it passes the smell test.  If you don't smell any odor from your previous sessions, you're good to go. Just give it a quick glance to make sure that you didn't miss any leftover material and you can pack up. For those of you that want to take a few extra steps, you can fully disassemble your device and store each part separately to make the device more inconspicuous. You can take your VapCap and pop it in your stash and away you go. Now that you've arrived at your destination, you can reassemble your VapCap and start using it. And if you're unable to purchase a torch lighter locally or if you can't travel with one, a big lighter is a perfectly suitable replacement and a pinch.  Share your experiences with traveling with a VapCap and what topics would you like to see discussed on future episodes of The Snap in the comments below. And that has been The Snap. Once again, I'm Retail Josh and thanks for watching.


Yeah, I'm getting excited That's saying in there oh Sequence effects folks sequence effects have to do with what happens when you kind of do either multiple interventions or multiple phases of an experiment Let me give you an example first and we can back up and look at the effect so for years I worked on an intervention at the college level to Reduce risky behavior or high-risk behavior, right? So in other words increasing condom use decreasing drug use and you know make all sorts of things a risky behavior Right, so our intervention was 16 weeks long and each week you had a different sort of component Right in the order in which you presented those could possibly change The effectiveness of the program as a whole so if I put behavioral control stuff up front And taught people about behavior that might have a different thing than a different effect on behavior overall Then putting the component or this the component the sequence on What do you call it on STIs and STDs up first, you know, so we manipulated those we did an experiment We tried to put them in different orders to see which one had more effectiveness on overall behavior the reduction of risky behavior So the point is though that sequence effects matter the order in which you present Interventions can change the effectiveness of the interventions by themselves overall because they depend on each other So anyway, it's always to sequence effect


we've got to really acknowledge that this excessive use of or waste of food rather than use of food that we don't need and we buy far more than we use before we go shopping get a list of what we're going to use don't just buy it on the off chance that you might use it buy it with a purpose make a big difference to the amount of emissions that we have and really have a great impact on our carbon footprint. I think it's got to be about what you buy I am as guilty of this as anybody sometimes you might think you want to be super healthy for example so you buy loads more fruit and veg and then you're not able to use it so it's about being realistic when you go shopping erring on the side of caution but also if you do see that you've got too much food you can cook it up and freeze it and then it doesn't need to go to waste also then when you're having a tough day it's handy there in the freezer to use you should be very concerned about the amount of food that's going to waste I think it's really important that people begin to understand the link between the food that they waste and greenhouse gas emissions and the fact that there are less food we waste we can lower our greenhouse gas emissions which will have an impact on the climate so some research recently done by rap shows that something like 81 percent of us are concerned about the climate but only 37 percent of us realize the link between wasting food and greenhouse gas emissions so alerting people to that is really important


So, good afternoon everybody. It's my pleasure to be, to welcome and congratulate the 2021 ICTP Prize winners who are present there at ICTP today. Rondru Tiana, Bari Malala and Narendra Oja. I wish I also could be present but I have to join by Zoom. I would like to just say a few words about the ICTP Prize which was created in 1982. It recognizes young scientists from developing countries who work and live in those countries and who have made outstanding and original contributions to physics. Each year, the ICTP Prize is given in the honor of a scientist who has made outstanding contributions to the field in which the prize is given. The 2021 ICTP Prize is dedicated to the memory of Jacob Bueblis who discovered the connection between sea surface temperature and easterly winds anomalies in the equatorial Pacific. He helped towards an understanding of the El Nino Southern Oscillation by suggesting that an anomalously warm spot in the eastern Pacific can weaken the east-west temperature difference, disrupting trade winds and which push warm water to the west. So these results have been important in climate science and the winners of this year's ICTP Prize are their own field of scientific research is closely connected. I would like to now first read the citations for Rondruth Yama Bari Malala and then the citation for Narendra Orsha. And perhaps then I will hand it over to Fred to give a more detailed scientific introduction to the two winners this year. So the 2021 ICTP Prize is awarded to Dr. Rondruth Yama Bari Malala for her outstanding and pioneering contributions that have advanced our understanding of the role of the Indian Ocean on the climate of Madagascar and South Africa and its response to climate change through the application of modeling tools and careful data analysis. The citation for Dr. Narendra Orsha is as follows. The 2021 ICTP Prize is awarded to Dr. Narendra Orsha for his outstanding contributions to the field of atmospheric chemistry and physics by performing in situ measurements, satellite data analysis and chemistry climate modeling is over South Asia. Dr. Orsha, just that these have had an enormous impact on our understanding of the influence of anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions on the Southeast Asia air quality. So I will now give the floor back to Fred since he is there. Thanks very much, Adish. So we will proceed with the with the handing of the document. Okay, first. Okay, okay. Congratulations. Congratulations. Okay, congratulations to both of you. So before we start the scientific presentations, I will just very briefly not talk very much, very informal, you know, informal talk about a little bit of the history of the candidates. Also, Rondro Barimala started her career in climate science, at least when she came to join our diploma program at ICTP. And if I remember correctly, you came actually from a solid earth background, but then you decided to do more kind of ocean atmosphere interactions. And so Rondro was so keen and so I was also her diploma thesis tutor together with Annalisa Braco. She was so keen to study further that she also joined the our common ICTP university of Trieste and OGS PhD program. And she conducted her PhD studies also here under the supervision of also Annalisa Braco and myself, I was a tutor. And so she wrote her PhD thesis already on variability of the Indian Ocean from inter-IU to Decade Time Scales. And after this important step, she moved on. Actually, her first step was then some shorter periods, I think at Georgia Tech. You moved on to the George Mason University and Professor Shukla and Devin Strauss are here from that university and had your first research experience actually as a postdoc there. Then you moved on to Singapore and continued to research there. Then Cape Town and now you're also affiliated with the Bjergnes Center in Bergen, right? And so while at the very beginning, the focus was more on just variability of the Indian Ocean, then in later years, Rondo focused a research more on the impacts of Indian Ocean variability and what's going on in the Indian Ocean in general on the climate of Madadaska and also specifically on South Africa. And in particular, we should also mention that Rondo has made important contribution to the latest IPCC report. She was part of working group one assessing the climate in that region which is extremely vulnerable to climate change and has therefore made an important contribution to this report too. So thanks for giving us a presentation then. And it's okay, we can have it. So then we have of course Narendra Arya who actually you finished your PhD in India, right? And if I understood correctly, your first experience was more on experimental, analyzing experimental data but always focused on air pollution and composition of air and how that may impact the health of humans. But then in your post-doc period, you went to the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, right? Where you probably met Andrea Potts I guess there and who was a former staff member of ICTP and so it was then when you came more into the combining modeling with observed data and you combine these two methods to gain even more insight into this phenomenon. In fact today we had your presentation at our conference on ENSO and monsoon dynamics. It was very interesting for us to learn how actually we are used to think of how aerosols for example can influence the monsoon. This is what I've learned in the past. It was the first time I heard a detailed study on how actually monsoon dynamics can influence the composition of the atmosphere. So there's an interaction between these two phenomenon which is extremely interesting. And now you're back to India and you're doing extremely well and performing high performance computing, modeling and combining this still with observational data and experimental data. Thank you very much to be here and to give you a presentation. Hi everyone and thanks very much Fred for the very nice introduction. It's always nice to be back here at ICTP and as Fred said I started my career in climate science here at ICTP. So this is like my academic home. So for the past five years my work has been focusing on sovereign African climate and extending a bit to the eastern African climate. So in southern Africa it's home to 180 million people and the majority of the population actually heavily rely on rain-fed agriculture. So it's really important for us to understand the mechanisms that drive the climate over the area. But also on the other side it's important for us to understand both processes so that we can do some process-based analysis of the state-of-the-art models that are used for future projection. And they are heavily used over the continent, over the subcontinent for future planning. So the work I'm going to present here was done under the umbrella of future climate for Africa. And this is really a teamwork so I want to acknowledge my collaborators, Ross Blemme, Fabian Tespio and Chris Risen. What we see here it's a simple sketch of the drivers of the sovereign African climate. So the colors are the topography. As you can see that the sovereign African area it's characterized by a very complex topography. But then there are also different large-scale signals that force the climate of the subcontinent, for instance, and so. But what they have in the plot here is the subtropical high, the masculine high, and the subatlantic high pressure. We have the impacts of the warm Indian Ocean and the cold Bangalab welding system from the Atlantic. And then we have moisture transports from the Indian Ocean itself, from the tropical Pacific and from the Congo basin. And the climate of the area it's driven by a very complex mix of these processes. Now if we look at what the state-of-the-art models are doing over the area. So this figure shows the precipitation bias in the ensemble mean of the CMIP-5 models. So we have this large excess in rainfall over mainland Africa and then deficit in rainfall over Madigascar. And this precipitation bias it's not only in the CMIP-5 but it's been persisting from CMIP-3, CMIP-5, and it's still there in CMIP-6. So the question is why, what we do not understand by having such a large bias. And if I am to draw a box here over mainland Africa and another box over Madigascar and look at this precipitation, this is what we have in the CMIP-5 models. So again positive biases over southern Africa and negative over Madigascar. And it's pretty consistent in all the, in most of the couple models. And some of the models actually have more than 300% rainfall compared to the observation. So that motivates us in trying to understand what actually drives the precipitation over this area. This figure it's been shown in the activity on NSOL teleconnection this week. So this is the global rainfall during January, February, March from observation. I think we use CMAP here. And one of the particularities of the sovereign hemisphere is the presence of these sovereign convergence zone. So we have the sovereign Indian Ocean Convergence Zone over the Indian Ocean. The SACC or sovereign Atlantic Convergence Zone over the Atlantic and the SPCC over the Pacific. What's particular with the Indian Ocean that as the SACC, there is actually Madigascar on the way. So it's really in the middle of the South Indian Ocean Convergence Zone that we have Madigascar. And if we look at the moisture flux or the circulation in the southwestern Indian Ocean, then we clearly see this Easterlies from the Indian Ocean somehow blocked by Madigascar before the moisture is going inside mainland Africa. And that's because of this Mozambique Channel Trap, a trap that forms between Madigascar and mainland Africa. So the main focus of this talk is really to understand what's the role of this Mozambique Channel Trap for the climate, for the rainfall in the region. So just to explain a bit the Mozambique Channel Trap. So it's a low pressure area in the Mozambique Channel. And as I said, it's on the path of the South Indian Ocean Convergence Zone. So it could impact the southern African rainfall. Two possibilities that can trigger the formation of the MCT, or Mozambique Channel Trap. It's the dynamical adjustment of the Easterlies flowing through Madigascar. So we saw these Easterlies then blocked by the topography and then there is this low pressure on the lee side of the mountain. That's one case, but the other case is also that it's thermally forced. So forced by the thermal forcing over Madigascar. So what we did was we quickly looked at these parameters, NETA, by every scenario at all, which compares the impact of the topography by dynamically adjusting the flow or by thermally forcing the flow. So NETA, significantly less than one, means that the effect of the topography is dominant compared to the effect of the thermal forcing. And in the analysis we saw that it's 0.07. So we were quite confident that the formation of the MCT is dominated by the topography of Madigascar. So what we did is that we did some sensitivity tests with regional climate models. And we gradually reduced the topography of Madigascar in these tests and then completely removed Madigascar from the map. So what I'm showing here is the control run where we have the full topography and the flat where we flattened the topography to 300 meters. In between these we did some experiments by gradually reducing the topography by 75%, 50%, and then flattened and then completely removed. And I will go back to this no Madigascar experiment later on because what we did in this one is that we replaced Madigascar with an interpolated SST from the surrounding grid points. So that kind of creates like an artificial warm anomaly in that area. So the model we used, it's worth around a 10 kilometer horizontal resolution and we run it for 17 summers. So as I said, the physical parametrization in all the experiments, they are all the same, but we just changed the topography. So the plot in the bottom here, it gives the latitudinal profile of the topography of Madigascar in those experiments. So the dashed lines are the maximum topography and the bold lines the min topography. The first thing we got from that experiment, when we plot the 850 ectopascal wind and geopotential height, the first one, the first figure here from CFSR, which is used as our boundary condition in the experiment. So we have this beautiful MCT over here. And then in the control, we still get the MCT. But then in flat and sea, we do have these anomalous easterlies going straight from the Indian Ocean to Southern Africa. And that's expected because we removed whatever blocks for moisture. So the mechanism for that is mainly by having this flow going through a mountain. It conserves its vorticity. And then on the east side of the mountain, we have this stretching because of the conservation of vorticity and formation of the cyclonic circulation on the east side of the mountain. So just to look at how blocked and unblocked the flow is. So we use the fruit number. It's a common number that's used to characterize blocked flow. And from fruit number close to zero, it's like the flow is completely blocked. And then when it goes higher, the blocking is becoming weak. So in the control run, we have 0.15. If we keep 75% of the topography of Madagascar, then the fruit number is 0.43. And if we flat Madagascar, then it's 0.48. And this number shows that there is actually a non-linearity of the impact of this blocking on the flow because 75% of the topography is still pretty much the same. It's almost the same as the control run, but if we look at the fruit number, it's almost the same as the flattened topography here. So that's something that we need to understand is there any threshold in the blocking that gets this flow going straight to the mainland Africa? Now, if we take the MCT index as the area of range of relative vorticity over the Mozambique Channel and plot it in the experiment. So what we see here on the left side, it's the annual cycle of the MCT. The red one, it's the CFSR, which is used as a boundary condition. The magenta of the control and the green and blue are the experiments. And as we can see here that from December to April, April was the end of our run, we have this clear negative relative vorticity in the Mozambique Channel. Whereas when we remove the topography and again here by keeping 75% of the topography, it's almost the same as flattening or completely removing Madagascar from the map. So if we do the mean of the January, February, March, which is the lowest relative vorticity, this is a negative value, with respect to the mean topography, that's what we get on this figure on the right here. So the red and magenta are respectively the CFSR and control. And then we get this large jump in relative vorticity by changing slightly the topography. So what we did is we looked at the difference in mean between flat and control and C and control. And that's because we want to know what's the effect of flats. So the arrows here are the moisture flats, anomalies, and the colors are the divergence. So it's pretty clear here that there is this large easterly anomalies going from around Madagascar or in the Mozambique Channel, going into mainland Africa, and also this increase in convergence over mainland Africa here. Now, if I drew a line here between Madagascar and Mozambique and calculate how much moisture is actually going into mainland Africa in that. So in the control, it's 49 in the flat and C is 79 and 89. And again, that shows that by changing the topography, then we almost double the amount of moisture that's transported from the eastern Indian Ocean to mainland Africa. So what's the impact of that on the precipitation? This is the difference between flat and control in the precipitation, large rainfall over mainland and deficit in rainfall over Madagascar. And these harsh areas are where the signals are significant. And same for the sea experiment, it's just that the amplitude is intensified because that's quite an extreme case. So we have this dipole-like precipitation anomaly with significant increase over mainland and decrease over Madagascar. So if I go back to the interpolated SST, as I said at the very beginning, that the way we did the sea experiment is to interpolate the ocean grid points in the surrounding area to where Madagascar is. So that could create a very artificial signal in our results. So what we did is we performed another experiment hit. It's exactly the same as sea, so like no Madagascar, but we doubled the amount of heat we put where Madagascar is. So by assuming that there is a linear response, of course there are always some nonlinearities, but we assume that there is a linear response. That's what we get by having warm SST over Madagascar. We have this strong cyclonic circulation here and then less moisture and less rainfall over mainland Africa and more rainfall over Madagascar. That's to say that the signal we have here, it's actually, of course there is an impact of the heating over Madagascar, but it's not really by increasing the rainfall over mainland Africa. So one of the questions that I got when I proposed this study was that no one is going to remove Madagascar from the map, so why would you do that? That's very theoretical and I completely agree with that. It's very theoretical, but at least we have an understanding of why the topography is actually important, representation of the topography is important. So Callum Maday produced this figure. He looked at the topography profiles over Madagascar in the CMIP5 models. So this 12-degree south, it's over the northern tip of Madagascar, and going south to the end of Madagascar. The different lines are the different topography in the CMIP5 models. And as you can see, as we go southern, there is this large discrepancy in the topography in the models. And here, for instance, it's not even removing 75% of the topography. It's more than that. It's more like flattening, completely flattening Madagascar. And if we look at the difference between the low topography models and high topography models, if you look at the difference in precipitation, this is what we get, precipitation and low-level wind at 850 ectopascal, very strong easterly anomalies from the Indian Ocean and this deficit in rainfall over Madagascar and accessing rainfall over the mainland. And if I bring us back to this one, we have the bias in the CMIP5 models. We have this typo-like signal. And of course, I'm not claiming here that all the biases in the CMIP5 models are from the topography of Madagascar or the Mozambique Channel trough. But it kind of gives us a hint that varies the contribution of the topography of Madagascar through the Mozambique Channel trough in these large biases in the model. So far, I hope I've convinced you that the topography of Madagascar actually modulates the southern African rainfall through the Mozambique Channel trough and the strength of the Mozambique Channel trough actually modulates the amount of moisture that's transported from the Indian Ocean going into mainland Africa. And lastly, the difficulties that climate models have in representing the mean rainfall in the area could partly due to a misrepresentation of the topography of Madagascar and or the MCT. So that's the mean rainfall for January, February, March. The question is, does the MCT have any variability? Does it vary year to year? Does it have any inter-annual variability? So what we did is we looked at the MCT indices. Here we tried different indices. The red one, it's the one that we used in the model by just taking the relative vorticity of the Mozambique Channel area. The blue one is by taking the geopotential height and the green one is by looking by taking the first component, first UOF component of a relative vorticity. And of course all of them show like inter-annual variability. However, this discrepancy is here. We don't fully quite understand why it is in the PC one but then in the height. It's because the height is kind of sensitive to large scale signals. So if we have changed in the large scale like the mascarine height for instance then you have this peak here. So we're more confident to use the original MCT index for relative vorticity of the area. So what we did is we classify these years as weak and strong MCTs. And then look at the vorticity budget in the weak MCT years and strong MCT years. So the figure we have here on the left it's the vorticity budget of a strong MCT year. And as we can see that the tilting is dominant and that's very obvious in the strong years. And also the vertical advection is dominant in the strong MCT. If we take all the weak MCT years and of course we still have the tilting because that's from the dynamical adjustment of the flow but the vertical advection completely disappeared. Now if we do the same analysis for the specific humidity by doing a composite of strong MCT years and weak MCT years then we have this positive anomaly of the Mosaic Channel extending to the surface of the Indian Ocean and a negative anomaly over mainland Africa and the opposite for the weak MCT years. So these kind of suggest that the MCT variability can be associated with moist convection over the Mosaic Channel. And what's the impact of that on the rainfall variability? So again doing the composite analysis using the CHIPS rainfall data and SIMUP data and these signals are pretty consistent that we have this positive anomaly accessing rainfall over Madagascar and a negative anomaly over mainland Africa by having a very strong MCT and vice versa for a weak MCT. And then again looking at the anomaly cloud cover these are very consistent with our precipitation results. If we look at the moisture transport and divergence in the analysis by the strong and weak MCTs then for the strong MCTs we have this anomalous westerlies going into the Indian Ocean so it's like we have less moisture transported into mainland Africa whereas we are opposites in the weak MCT. So to summarize we know that the MCT has an internal variability and it's associated to be moist convection within the Mosaic Channel and strong MCT years tend to have excess rain over mainland Africa and deficit over Madagascar. One thing with this Mosaic Channel trap the MCT index is that now it's been used as one of the automatized evaluation metrics for southern African rainfall in the SIMUP models so hopefully this will appear soon in the ESM file too. And thanks very much. Questions, Radha? You do have questions. Thanks for the wonderful talk. I had a question about the representation of the Mozambique trough in SIMUP 5 models and I was wondering if they're able to represent the variability correctly or it's just a general bias that's in the SIMUP 5 models. So we haven't really checked the variability in the SIMUP 5 but we've looked at the main MCT and yes it's there so when you have weekend city you tend to have this large rainfall over mainland Africa in the SIMUP 5 models. Because I've also been looking at some similar things and from what I've seen it seems like in the SIMUP 5 models that the variability is completely overwhelmed by the Mozambique trough and maybe that's something we can talk about afterwards. I was wondering that giving this very important role of the topography that you have found have you had the chance to look at the ensemble of the Cordex Africa to see if you get any hint of improvement? No, the reason why we didn't really look at that it's that the boundary of the Cordex Africa it's very close to Madagascar and I wouldn't really make sense to we could look at that but I think it would be affected by that boundary really very close to Madagascar. I would be curious and you show this high mountain minus low topography case is this one-to-one with high resolution with this low resolution or do some models have a fix to pose some you call it envelope or graphy or I don't know is it a one-to-one? By doing a mean of models that have topography higher than the observation and then mean of the models having topography lower than the what's in the era or CFSR so it's not a comparison like one-by-one one-to-one model but it's like a mean of the models classified by the topography but yeah it would be interesting to look to compare with the high resolution version of one model for instance that improves yeah. Okay if there are no more questions we can thank again Rondra for this exciting presentation so good very good afternoon to all of you and thanks very much for coming to this talk so I will take you to another part of developing world it is Indian subcontinent what we call as South Asia and we will focus mainly on atmospheric traces and aerosols so earth's atmosphere mainly is composed by nitrogen, oxygen and organ about 99.9% of atmosphere but then this remaining 0.1% is really really important in the future role in the air pollution and climate change so that is how we develop a lot of interest into it but somehow a series of complex processes related to physical process atmospheric dynamics and then a lot of chemical reactions which happen in presence of sunlight that we call as photochemistry and then whatever pollution is at one place it keeps on getting transported through horizontal winds and other vertical moments so it keeps on basically all different type of process they come together and then the net result is what we see the distribution of traces and aerosols in the atmosphere so as you can see the major sources there are really diverse sources like even natural trees, forests they also emit different type of organic compounds agriculture you know a lot of ammonia and other things that are emitted from them they can also convert into particles like aerosols then biomass burning is also of different types for example they can be in the natural wildfires in the forests and we expect that in the climate warming they can increase more but there are other types also like crop residue burning done by farmers to clear their fields after they basically get their crops the type of all diverse emissions they undergo a lot of processes chemistry and transport and then what they can affect these gases and aerosols they can affect human health especially the particles which are smaller in size they can really penetrate through the lungs and they can create haze and they also affect vegetation and crop productivity so with this they are really important and we really need to know and then we need to pinpoint their sources not just at global or regional skills but to the local skills to actually inform policies like how to improve the air quality and how to mitigate their impact on the climate so in this direction space based observations did provide some good clues this is satellite data of nitrogen oxide you can see some large enhancement in the this region is called the Indo-Gangetic plane in north India and this is eastern Asia and if you can see this Indo-Gangetic plane so this is most densely populated region in the world so you can see the population distribution here so while more population they can have more emissions but at the same time a larger population is at a health greater health risk in these regions and some global model studies so basically these models take the information on emissions from different sources and they use our knowledge of physics and chemical reactions to calculate the concentration of aerosols and dress gases and then they use metrics to calculate what could be the impact on human health they find that especially human health can be more in the east and south Asian regions these numbers are basically telling in one degree by one degree are 100 kilometer by 100 kilometer how many excess premature motilities can be caused by aerosols and dress gases like ozone and in another study they use another model and they compute the ozone distribution over India and they estimate that the effect of ozone pollution on agriculture is that loss is efficient to feed about 94 million people who live below the poverty line so the impact is not only on health but is also on agricultural productivity and many of the sustainable goals of the united nations they cannot be achieved until we achieve kind of clean air and reduce the levels and another process that is becoming more important is climate warming so in Europe they found that with increase in the temperature there can be more ozone in the future one because the chemistry can be more intense with higher temperatures and another because with climate warming the forests and trees they can emit more biogenic compounds but studies in Indian subcontinent they are still lacking so we need to because Indian conditions in both chemical environment wise and also climatic condition wise they are very different and these studies not only are important for the atmospheric composition or south Asia but through monsoon the air can get uplifted vertically and then the air masses are trapped into what we call as monsoon anticyclone and then the atmospheric composition as far as the Mediterranean all are impacted Lelywild et al. wrote that monsoon has two faces like a genus head so it can inject the pollution from lower troposphere to higher altitudes but at the same time it also is a remarkably strong cleansing mechanism so it removes a lot of pollution and it creates a lot of hydroxyl radicals which help cleaning the atmosphere so with this background basically the studies and especially studies combining experimental data with models they are really important in south Asian region so we use models and we especially try to use regional scale models so the idea is that they take the transport from outside regions from global model data sets and then from within that small region we do the high resolution simulation then for we divide the region in small small boxes and we calculate the all the production loss and influx from outside and what goes outside from that box and this is done for each small small box within that region and we use a high performance computing facility at my institute in Ahmedabad and the model that I am using is called weather research and forecasting and this is very popular model it is used very widely to give you weather forecasts in US Europe and in India also but the major thing is that we are coupling it with detailed chemistry of the atmosphere and then we are running it a high resolution generally global models their resolution is about 100 kilometer by 100 kilometer but to go really up to the local scales we are doing simulations at 12 kilometer by 12 kilometer so and then we have to put some simplifications of the chemistry and then we have to because we have to India is really large region so we have to cover entire India so to save the computations we have to use simple chemistry and I will show what those simplifications how they affect the model performance most importantly since these models were developed for different parts of the world and when we are applying to developing Indian regions we have to do rigorous evaluation of the model before we conclude much on health impacts or policy formulation we need to have a rigorous evaluation which I think was the biggest challenge because data sets are very scarce in developing Indian regions so I will show a lot of our efforts that we have made in this direction and besides our own modeling we also use reanalysis data sets like data sets so similar to that here we are using some chemical reanalysis so like if we have satellite data set that can be assimilated with model so these type of data we can also use for India so this is our domain of the model this is covering almost entire India some extra simulation we are doing to cover even bigger regions and what information goes into the model is basically the emissions of all different gases and aerosols from different sources most importantly anthropogenic sources like fossil fuel burning then biomass burning is coming biogenic emissions are calculated online because as I said earlier that emissions from trees vegetation they depend upon the temperature so those are calculated using the weather conditions and then we compare we got several stations although they are not kind of covering a lot at high resolution in India but we can make some comparison with the observations and there is a lot of uncertainty in the emission data itself so we use three different emission inventories for India and we found that output can really change if we use one emission inventory as compared to other so this is an important challenge for developing regions that emission input they are not very fixed they are not very accurate so substantial uncertainty into our conclusions can pop up from that and not just the emission inventories it is also important how much simplification is done into writing the chemical mechanism of the model so if we use one chemistry mechanism if we focus just on this blue line and this pink line so when we basically compare we keep everything same just we keep more details of the chemistry then also model outputs are changed a lot so by comparing lot of data sets we came up with the configuration with which we can really reproduce in a better way the observations that we had in India so for example here I am comparing our simulation with a ship cruise based experiment in the Bay of Bengal so you can see that these black dots are basically the observations collected by during the ship and this blue line continuous line is the our simulation so there was some difference in the levels but if you see the variability so model is capturing that same way we are comparing ozone here we did additional simulation in which we turned off all the emissions happening in India and then this line become this dotted almost flat type of line it tells that the variations that ship based experiment list are seeing the Bay of Bengal to great extent they were controlled by the outflow from the Indian processes like so this is we are putting into a simpler form here that air is entering from this Arabian sea and while leaving India towards reaching the ship based instrument it is the photo chemistry is happening exactly in this part of the region so this type of information we can get from the when we combine the observations and model so this was ship data now let's see how the data of model compares with the aircraft based experiment so aircraft based data was collected from by putting instruments into Lufthansa airline which used to fly between Frankfurt and Chennai so when the aircraft takes off from Chennai they get kind of one profile up to about 200 hectopascal that is the cruising altitude of long long flights and then when it comes back to Chennai and lands then they get another profile so taking this type of experimental data we compare with our model and this is basically distribution of water vapor so when models capture this type of vertical distribution of water vapor we get confidence that they are getting the monsoonal convection right so we go again to the satellite based observations they can also help filling the gap of experimental data and what interesting we find is the left this panel is basically our simulation and these are data from three different satellites OMI is NASA's ocean monitoring instrument GOM2 and CIMHCR from European Space Agency so here we are comparing one particular species called formaldehyde the scientific significance is that most of the hydrocarbons when they undergo different processes in the atmosphere they are converted into formaldehyde so if formaldehyde is high that means that that particular region is experiencing intense photochemistry and the technical importance of this species is that it has some spectral signatures so it can be measured from satellites other species are also important but they cannot be measured through satellites so with this we compared our model output with the different satellites so what we noticed is that our model predicts other than the endogangetic plane besides that it is also showing a lot of hot spots in the regions which are not that much dominated by anthropogenic activities and these regions are basically dominated more by forest area and natural emissions so that was one important finding that because in the future when climate warming will happen probably this type of process will become more important the natural biogenic emissions they can be more enhanced the other important point that we conclude by comparing these satellites is this that there is some differences between the model and satellite but there are also substantial differences if you compare one satellite with another satellite so this means that we need to establish experimental network of stations within India so that we can validate both satellites and then we can pinpoint the uncertainties in the model so we applied this model to a particular problem which was of interest for wider public interest also and for scientific interest also that in India every every towards winter we see a lot of hedge covering entire endogangetic plane this is really widespread so these are numbers are called fine particulate matter there as I was saying that small particles they affect health more strongly so this is the distribution of those and to make sense of these numbers generally generally the level should be less than 25 generally the level should be less than 25 to do not affect our health too much but you can see that most of the regions it is really widespread and levels are exceeding by order of magnitude so the impact will be really remarkable on health and it happens typically towards every post monsoon and winter that most of them are this endogangetic plane that experiences really really high levels of the particulate matter so we did the simulations these are our simulation plots and we try to compare it with some of the stations located in the gangetic plane and although model does not perform perfectly but there were some agreements between the time variations that we saw in the observations when we compared the model output so what we did we removed the biomass burning in the model and calculated what is the difference that is coming because of the biomass burning emissions so we find that in the Punjab Haryana regions where most of the crop residue burning happens so their strong effects were there from the fires and they were also persisting and spreading around during post monsoon like November but when we have the maximum pollution loading that is in winters then the or gangetic plane the effect of biomass burning was not there so it clearly tells that biomass burning effects they are only important in the post monsoon and when the PM 2.5 was the highest then fire effects were really not important at least for the gangetic plane some biomass burning is still visible over the Himalaya but this is related to the forest fires and these emissions they do not sink down and they are more confined within the Himalaya so with this we try to kind of communicate what are the important sources and what are not and why this type of enhancement are suddenly appearing you can see that towards winter temperature is really really very low and boundary layer depth that tells us how vertically the dilution of pollution can happen that is very very shallow so all the aerosols they are confined within a very small volume near the surface so at that time if sources like other anthropogenic sources they are high so the pollution problem is really really very intense then in the previous talk also there was a lot of highlight about representing the topography of complex regions so in India also we have a really highly complex terrain that is Himalaya and it is I was mentioning I was mentioning that it was just above this Indo-Gangetic Plain and kind of which is also affected by a lot of biomass burning fires this region is highly complex in terms of topography you can have a look that this region you see a lot of houses this is basically what you call Indo-Gangetic Plain and for this I was mentioning that this is most densely populated part in the world but if you see that very many these mountains are located so within this region if you want to do modeling so they often models do not resolve a highly basically plain regions placed very close to highly complex terrain of the Himalaya so what we do we go to very high resolutions so this star is basically this location this is in the central Himalaya and this is basically an astronomical observatory I was basically doing my PSD from this institution it is called so I basically downscaled the model to really really high resolutions at one kilometer by one kilometer and we tried to see if the models are becoming any better so this is common problem of the global climate models that in mountains they kind of overestimate temperature because they do not represent the mountain tops very well so when we go to from coarse resolution to high resolutions we really improve the resolutions of temperature for the central Himalaya so that was kind of bit promising but there was some discrepancies that in the local scale atmospheric dynamics model is not getting the winds direction properly so this is the observation observation says that most of winds are coming from east but at coarse resolution this component was missing at high resolution it appeared but it also appeared with some discrepancies right so the result is that we could better reproduce the temperature variations in Himalaya but discrepancies in winds are still substantial and there are local scale processes so probably it will still be challenged to even at such high resolution it will be a challenge to reproduce this type of environments so when the human intelligence was kind of giving limited performance we tried artificial intelligence also for Himalayan environments so this is one exercise that we have recently initiated we use machine learning algorithms and first we try to train the machine learning algorithm with 2-3 years of observations and then we try to test whether it can predict the remaining observation independent data sets but to really exploit or really test the ability of machine learning we took long term data from the chemical reanalysis model data like temperature humidity, boundary layer height, winds and some precursors of ozone like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide etc. and when we put all those arrays into the machine learning algorithm then model performance was really good so we can say that machine learning based models they can really perform well and they can help in the prediction of ozone and probably this type of exercise we can extend for aerosols and we can try to explore more potential of machine learning to complement the conventional regional modeling that we are doing and we also analyze this type of long term data and find one important interesting result that while sulphur dioxide that is a tracer of emissions from for energy generation like power plants etc. coal burning etc. so earlier the trains were very fast or India but in recently they are slightly select they are showing some signatures of stabilization and trains are becoming smaller now so this type of information can also be generated when we combine the satellite observations with models so to summarize what all I discussed is that several important features that we saw in ground based, ship based aircraft and satellite data sets or Indian subcontinent we could reproduce many of them with good ability of course there are some more biases and we need to work them out and we use the model to discuss an important problem of widespread winter time pollution across Indo-Gangetic plane and we found that biomass burning does not have the strong role at least in the winter time its role was important but only up to the post monsoon using our simulations we could also predict that some natural sources are also important and their role can be enhanced in the case of climate warming and it can be more important in the future as we see a slow down in anthropogenic tracers like sulphur dioxide and we could resolve the Himalayan topography better as compared to previous studies at high resolutions and improve the temperature variations but still there are substantial discrepancies in the simulating the local scale dynamics of the Himalaya so it will take more efforts to really study the transport of pollution from gangetic plane to the Himalaya and see what could be its impact on climate and we did some initial exercises using machine learning methods and we find that they can help especially in the regions where conventional models are not performing very well and especially if we can have some long term experimental data sets to train the machine learning algorithms so I also like to thank many experimentalist friends and collaborators who have been helping throughout the work and thank you for your attention Thanks for the questions Very nice lecture Dr. Reza the role of biomass burning we really hear different claims about how bad it is and how important it is obviously newspaper reports are filled during the winter season the whole Indo-Gangetic plane gets kind of quite affected so what is the evidence based on which you are saying that it is not a serious problem during the winter because the impacts are there so what is the main reason for that winter problem Right as you rightly pointed out it was an impression that biomass burning especially for field clearing that is kind of responsible for this widespread haze but these type of fires they can be detected from satellites so the emissions from fire that we included in the model they are based on satellite based observations of fires so once we included in the model then our model was reproducing the day to day changes in the aerosols over this region and then when we remove that fire emissions from the model then we see that there was not much effect on the Gangetic plane's air quality so fire's role was important and it is really really important at least during post monsoon when the crop residue burning is happening but after some time these type of aerosols their lifetime is two weeks or so so after that their effect is gone so then the major thing is happening that it is two cold conditions across the Gangetic plane and whatever remaining anthropogenic aerosols are there from non-fire sources they are trapped into very shallow stagnant atmospheric conditions so to counter this type of effect produced by sharp change in mutuality we have to rigorously bring down the other sources also just expand on the non-fire related anthropogenic sources what are they just can you mention a few of them right so towards winter some the other sources like fossil fuel burning industrial emissions they are all time there but towards winter the additional other sources come for heating purposes heating purposes and residential purposes so they are also getting enhanced I would be interested if they are in this in the footholds in this pollution area if there if you know if they are strong dynamically induced inter-annual variations of this pollution or if it is essentially every year almost the same okay so every year this is a typical cycle that towards post monsoon and especially winters the haze is most most pronounced and it really affects a lot of flights and they have to get cancelled due to poor visibility so this is a typical phenomena and a lot of research is happening on this and but within the one season to other season there is a lot of change in the air quality from one year to the other you just expect the same kind of more or less the same kind of suggest that important seasonal changes they have somewhat control on it and some new studies are coming up and they are telling that there are some chemical environments which allow more condensation and aerosol growth in these environments so those angles are also being investigated right now so there are some puzzles still in this problem the general variability of circulation from year to year can be a source because the inversion layer once it so that has nothing to do that has to do with the sort of climate variables it can it is playing a role is that correct there is a significant some contribution also of just the weather and climate state itself right so in the years which are kind of colder than other years the effect can be more there are no further questions or comments what is the next item on the refreshments on the terrace is there is no other photo right the photos we have done with the photos ok ok ok ok let's thank again then both and we have a refreshments on the terrace


First Coast teachers joined WJCT and ViStar Credit Union for the 6th Annual Teach Conference, a day to engage, empower, and inspire. Feature keynote speakers are Wes Moore and Hamish Brewer. Educators will present breakout sessions and share best practices on topics such as equity, classroom management, and technology. Attendees will enjoy breakfast, lunch, a swag bag, and so much more on Saturday, March 2nd, at the Hyatt Hotel. Find more information at wjct.org slash teach.