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Volume 8, Issue 9 (Suppl) J Earth Sci Clim Change
ISSN: 2157-7617 JESCC, an open access journal Climate Congress 2017
October 16-17, 2017
Page 14
conferenceseries.com
October 16-17, 2017 Dubai, UAE
3rd World Congress on
Climate Change and Global Warming
Monitoring air pollution and climate change in the Eastern Mediterranean Middle East (EMME)
region: Challenges and opportunities
Almost 400 million people live in the Eastern Mediterranean Middle East (EMME); a region where climate change is
already evident (the number of extremely hot days has doubled in the region since 1970). In the near future, this region
could become so hot that human habitability is compromised. The goal of limiting global warming to less than 2 °C, agreed at
the 2015 Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris will not be
sufficient to prevent this scenario. In combination with increasing air pollution and windblown desert dust, the environmental
conditions could become intolerable and may force people to migrate. The lack of constrains by accurate in-situ atmospheric
data of key climate forcers has been identified as a major limitation for the validation/performance of climate models over the
EMME. This may have a strong impact in the design of efficient regional/national Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
strategies, which are usually fed by high-resolution regional climate projections. In this context, the rapid implementation
of a regional atmospheric network with high quality data following international standards appears as a high priority for the
entire EMME region. With the support of the ACTRIS pan-European Research Infrastructure, the Cyprus Institute is currently
putting unprecedented efforts to establish the first ever long-term observations of climate forcers (greenhouse gases, aerosols,
clouds, reactive gases) in the EMME region. This infrastructure gathers a ground-based supersite and a fleet of Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles equipped with miniaturized sensors to scrutinize the vertical distribution of air pollutants in the first 5 km of
the atmosphere. This infrastructure is seen as the first step towards a regional coordinated atmospheric network that is still
missing in the Middle East.
Biography
Jean Sciare is the Director of the Energy Environment and Water Research Center of the Cyprus Institute, Cyprus. His main expertise covers the experimental
characterization of atmospheric pollutants; addressing issues related their impacts on air quality, health and climate. He is currently leading the development of
several major research infrastructures in Cyprus, contributing to the long-term observation of key climate forcers in the Eastern Mediterranean Middle East region.
He has co-authored more than 100 international refereed publications and more than 200 presentations at international conferences devoted to atmospheric
chemistry and physics.
Jean Sciare
The Cyprus Institute, Cyprus
Jean Sciare, J Earth Sci Clim Change 2017, 8:9 (Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/2157-7617-C1-032