Reactivit'Air

This year was my first time at the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). Even though it felt overwhelming at times, it is also a very stimulating conference including sessions related to important topics beyond scientific topics, such as short courses about various subjects (e.g. peer-review, grants) and more general sessions about scientists' well-being and diversity and equality for instance. The EGU General Assembly (GA) is a week-long conference taking place yearly in Vienna since 2005 (the first GA was in Nice, France, in 2004). It is huge (really!) and brings together over 16'000 scientists (new record this year) from 113 countries representing all fields related to space and Earth Science, such as atmospheric sciences, climate science, oceanography, biogeosciences, cryosphere research, hydrology, seismology, volcanology, planetary science, among many others. As the Atmospheric Sciences division is on of the largest of EGU and as I have be...

Figure 1. Wall projection in the Think Corner of the University of Helsinki during INAR Climate Festival (Picture: Arnaud Praplan, CC-BY-4.0 ) The INAR Climate Festival took place on 25 May in the Think Corner of the University of Helsinki. It was a large event meant to inaugurate the new Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR) and present its important research to society.  Among the guests for the inauguration were former President Tarja Halonen, Jukka Kola (Rector of the University of Helsinki), Kaarle Hämeri ( Chancellor of the University of Helsinki) , Juhani Damski ( FMI Director General) , Jari Gustafsson ( Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment) and Erja Heikkinen (Science Adviser at the Ministry of Education and Culture), displaying the many connections and large impact of INAR in society: education, research, business. All guests were stressing how INAR is an important platform to understand and po...

The annual seminar of the Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Atmospheric Science – From Molecular and Biological Processes to the Global Climate led by Academician Markku Kulmala took place in Helsinki last week from 4 to 6 October 2017. The seminar offers a unique opportunity for participants to share their work and discover the work of collaborators beyond their immediate field of research to foster innovative future research. What is a Centre of Excellence? Funding provided by the Academy of Finland to CoEs aims at creating research and training networks to achieve long-term (and even risky!) objectives. The Academy of Finland's Centres of Excellence (CoE) are the flagships of Finnish research. They are close to or at the very cutting edge of science in their fields, carving out new avenues for research, developing creative research environments and training new talented researchers for the Finnish research system and Finnish business and industry. (Source:  A...