TRENDS 2022

The 11th International Workshop on Long-Term Changes and Trends in the Atmosphere (TRENDS 2022) was held at the Space and Earth Observation Centre, Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), Helsinki, Finland from May 30th - June 3rd.

AO scientist Dr. Selvaraj Dharmalingam attended the conference and gave a presentation titled “Long-term Trends in the Upper atmosphere using the incoherent scatter radar observations over Arecibo”.

“It was a great opportunity to go to this conference and share the very interesting science we are still able to achieve using the data acquired at the Arecibo Observatory,” says Dr. Dharmalingam.

Of the many interesting new studies presented at the conference, Dr. Selvaraj noted one study that highlighted the uniqueness and importance of measurements acquired at Arecibo’s location for understanding trends and effects of climate change in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

The presentation, given by L. Qian, was titled “Whole-Atmosphere Model Simulation of the Solar cycle, greenhouse gas, and Geomagnetic field effects on the Atmosphere trends”. Their model predicts a significant contribution of magnetic field variation to the long-term trends of the upper atmosphere. Geomagnetic field variation is higher over (nearer) Arecibo than in any other location over the globe; it is even more variable than the region known as the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly (SAMA).

The published manuscript detailing those studies can be found here: Contributions by the changing greenhouse gas concentrations and Earth's magnetic field from the 1960s to 2010s.