Richard Armstrong is Associate Professor of Geography, Adjunct, at University of Colorado. He is Senior Research Scientist and member of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (Cires), in Colorado. He studies especially snow, snow cover and glacier.
Fluctuations of the Earth’s snow and ice cover provide one of the most visually obvious and dramatic examples of climate change. Direct and indirect measurements of air temperature over past centuries indicate periods of both cooling and warming, although in the most recent decades the Earth, in almost all locations, has experienced a dramatic warming trend.
Liisa Jalkanen is Chief of the AER responsible for the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) programme and the GAW Urban Research Meteorology and Environment (GURME) project of WMO, World Meteorological Organization.
The Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW), the long-term global atmospheric chemistry programme of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), focuses on greenhouse gases, ozone, UV, aerosols, selected reactive gases, and precipitation chemistry and their role in climate, weather, air quality and long range transport/deposition of air pollution.
Member of the Steering Committee UNEP-ABC e coordinator of the European Network of Excellence "Atmospheric Composition Change, the European Network", Sandro Fuzzi is the director at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of CNR.
Changes in atmospheric composition directly affect many aspects of life, determining climate, air quality and atmospheric inputs to ecosystems. In turn, these changes affect the fundamental necessities for human existence: health, food production, and water availability.
Professor Martin Beniston teaches Climate Change and Climate Impact at the University of Geneva, has a PhD in Atmospheric Science from the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris and an habilitation in Climate Research from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
The Alps are one of the principal sources of water for many European rivers, notably the Rhine, the Rhone, and tributaries of the Po and the Danube; in this respect, the Alps have often been referred to as the ‘water tower of Europe’.
Jordi Catalan Aguilà is Professor at the Centre for Advanced Studies of Blanes (CEAB), an institute of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). He is an ecologist and a limnologo, and an expert of the global change especially in relation to alpine lakes.
High mountain lakes are among the ecosystems with larger similarities throughout the planet. The low permeability of crystalline rocks favours the presence of lakes and, because orogenesis is the main source of this bedrock type, most of the large and high ranges of the World have an associated lake district.
