A recorded video presentation by Prof. YAN Zhongwei with Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) at Chinese Academy of Sciences was delivered at 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Seattle, USA on Feb 16, 2020. Yan had to cancel his travel to Seattle one week before the meeting due to the novel coronavirus outbreak in China. Along with Yan, about 30 registrants from China, including 10 PIOs of CAS institutes, were unable to attend because of travel restrictions.

Though not making it to the meeting, it is still the first time Chinese atmospheric scientists organizing a scientific session, coordinated by CAS, at an AAAS annual meeting. The session, entitled “Climate Change and Climate Extremes: Precipitation and Projections”, was proposed by IAP executive Director General Prof. ZHOU Tianjun in 2019 and approved by AAAS organizing committee. Zhou also invited Dr. Michael Wehner of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Professor Albert Klein Tank of UK Met Office Hadley Centre to speak as panelists at the session. Yan is one of three panellists.

In the video talk, Yan introduced IAP’s research on how world’s most populous region will be exposed to more record-breaking climate extremes. According to Wehner who kindly played the videos of Yan’s talk at the session, “the session was quite successful. In fact one of the attendees specifically asked me to thank Zhongwei for his interesting presentation.” Despite the fact that it was the final session of the program, it was well attended. Discussion afterwards was also interesting and focused on tipping points.

In emails after the session, Wehner and Tank thanked IAP for the opportunity. Both felt it was a good chance to get across the message of impact of climate change to American audience and media.