Clouds both reflect sunlight, and trap heat: the dominance of cooling or warming effects depends on complex interactions between clouds, radiation and the land and ocean surfaces. These fields are linked in a complex (nonlinear) manner from planetary down to dissipation scales (a factor;10**10). In some cases such as cloud drops, the range of interaction scales can be even larger.
This session will highlight nonlinear and scaling aspects of ocean and atmosphere dynamics including clouds, radiative transfer, turbulence, and climate. Emphasis will be on the space-time scales of atmospheric, oceanic or climatological structures, fields and time series, on their scaling, multifractal and extremely variable properties. This includes the latest developments of corresponding notions, methods, theories and models needed to understand the underlying fundamental mechanisms.

Specific topics include: theoretical and experimental studies of turbulence, and related cascade models; turbulent transfers of energy, passive and active scalar diffusion/transport (including clouds and precipitation); seasonal, interannual and climate-scale variations and coupling across abroad range of scales; surface/atmosphere interactions; global change problems.