From September 26th to 27th, 2018, at the invitation of the Eco-Climate Group of the Institute of Applied Ecology (IAE), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), a team of four scientists from Finland, including Professor Markku Kulmala, director of the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR), University of Helsinki, Professor Tuukka Petaja, Dr. Jaana Back and Dr. Joni Kujansuu came to the Changbai Mountain Forest Ecosystem Research Station of CAS (hereinafter referred to as Changbai Station) for a two-day visit and academic exchange.

Professor Markku Kulmala is a leading scientist in the field of atmospheric and earth system research, the founder of the International SMEAR (Station for Measuring Ecosystem-Atmosphere Relations) observation network, and the winner of the 2018 Chinese Government "Friendship Award". He is currently the director of INAR at University of Helsinki, a member of the Academy of Europe and a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests include atmospheric aerosol nucleation and growth mechanisms, kinetics of atmospheric aerosols and clusters, and biosphere-aerosol-cloud-climate interactions. He has published more than 800 SCI papers (including more than 40 papers in Science and Nature), with a total citation of more than 30,000 times. For the past five years, he has been the world's highest cited scientist in ESI geosciences.

In the conference room of Changbai Station, Prof. WANG Anzhi, head of the station, briefed about the facility platforms and the overall situation of Changbai Station. Prof. WU Jiabing introduced the four Finnish scientists to his team’s research work conducted at the station. Subsequently, Dr. Kujansuu and Prof. Kulmala gave talks on operation mode and results of SMEAR network. Under the leadership of Prof. Kulmala, SMEAR possesses the most complete parameters and the most long-lasting data, and has become the world's “flag-ship” station network measuring near-surface ecosystem-atmosphere synergistic processes. Based on their observations and theoretical analyses, Prof. Kulmala’s team proposed a feedback loop mechanism for terrestrial biosphere-aerosol-cloud-climate interactions, which quantitatively revealed how global warming is caused by elevated CO₂ and how changes in forest productivity affect the natural emissions of volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) and the formation of secondary organic aerosols, which in turn affect cloud and radiation balance and generate feedback to the climate system.

The four Finnish scientists paid a visit to the standard meteorological observation field, the background monitoring platform for atmospheric constituents, plant/soil herbarium, forest hydrological simulation laboratory, flux observation towers, and the slope runoff observation platform. The Finnish scientists showed great interest in the unique condition for atmospheric observation and the well-equipped facilities at Changbai Station. They expressed their willingness to cooperate with researchers of Changbai Station to upgrade the Station to be a SMEAR Network Standard Station. The two sides reached preliminary cooperation intentions on network platform construction and technical personnel training and exchange. (Photo: Ecological Climate Group)