BSC researchers, selected to join international organisms in earth sciences field

20 November 2018

Sara Basart and Markus Donat, from Earth Sciences department, have been selected as members of expert teams by UN organisms.

Sara Basart, BSC researcher in the Atmospheric Composition Group, has been selected by the UN Environment Management Group as member of the group of experts for the "UN Coalition on Combating Sand and Dust Storms". Sand and dust storms play a significant role in different aspects of weather, climate and atmospheric chemistry and represent a serious hazard for life, health, property, environment and economy. Understanding, managing and mitigating sand and dust storm risks and effects requires fundamental and cross-disciplinary knowledge. It is because the multidisciplinary aspects associated to sand and dust storms that this initiative includes several UN agencies as UNCCD, UNEP and WMO and its objective is to make visible and combat the problems derived from dust storms.

This initiative is aligned with all the work that the Earth Sciences department is developing within the framework of the WMO Dust Centers (SDS-WAS and Barcelona Dust Forecast Center), the AXA Chair Programme on Sand and Dust Storms hosted by BSC and supported by the AXA Research Fund, and also with the COST Action inDust.

Markus Donat, the Climate Prediction group co leader at BSC, has been selected as Associated Expert with the Expert Team on Data Development and Stewardship of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Commission for Climatology. The mission of this expert team is to provide guidance on quality control, homogeneity, uncertainty, traceability and maturity of climate data, and liaise with other programmes to pursue unified approaches to manage data for climate service.

Association with the WMO Expert Team provides international visibility to BSC, to coordinate and guide the development of datasets critical to understand climate variability and change. This activity also aligns with the leading role of the BSC Earth Sciences department in coordinating the quality assurance for the Copernicus Climate Data Store.