The main subjects of this session are the nature, theory and parameterisation of geophysical turbulence and boundary-layer processes relevant to the physics and modelling of weather, climate and air/water-quality. A principal progress in this area of research is needed to more realistically reproduce extreme and dangerous weather events and local consequences of climate change. The session covers the following main topics.

•Theoretical and experimental studies of turbulence-closure problem with emphasis on very stable stratification and turbulent convection, accounting for interactions between the mean flow, turbulence, internal waves and large-scale self-organised structures.
•Large-eddy simulation and direct numerical simulation of turbulent flows.
•Theory and modelling of boundary-layer type flows, such as sea breezes, katabatic winds, internal boundary layers, etc., and parameterisation of sub-grid scale motions in general circulation models (GCMs).
•Methods for calculation of near-surface turbulent fluxes in GCMs; their experimental verification, comparison, and testing; modern demands and prospects for their improvement over land (accounting for vegetation, urban canopy, dust or snow, etc.) and over water (in the condition of open ocean, coastal waters, storms, swell).
•Boundary-layer clouds and marine, cloud toped boundary layers: physics and parameterisation within GCMs.
•Atmospheric boundary layers over heterogeneous terrain, archipelago and coastal zones: flux-aggregation problems.
•Weather and climate phenomena essentially dependent on the interaction between the atmosphere and underlying land/sea/ice surface.

Besides the above usual agenda, this time we arrange presentation of the newly launched international programme “Pan-Eurasian Experiment” (PEEX) involving institutions from European Union, Russia and China (http://www.atm.helsinki.fi/peex/). PEEX addresses interlinked global challenges like climate change, air quality, biodiversity loss, chemicalisation, food supply, energy production and fresh water in integrative way recognising the increasing role of the arctic and northern boreal forests in the context of global change. PEEX includes establishing and maintaining a long-term coherent research activity and research/educational infrastructure in the PEEX domain. It aims to contribute to the Earth-system science agenda and climate policy for topics inherent to Pan-Eurasian environment. PEEX is planned in a continuous manner starting from 2013. The PEEX scientific outcome is exploited via new climate scenarios in global and regional scales. PEEX will also provide mitigation plans for the air quality problems (such as emission sources and long-term transport), natural hazards and land use under changing climate.

The session also includes presentation of educational project TEMPUS-159352 Development of Qualification Framework in Meteorology and round-table discussion of modern challenges to meteorological and environmental education, in particular, in the context of PEEX.