In 2006, a team of NCAR researchers convened in Mexico City for MIRAGE, a study of the chemical and physical transformation of air pollution in urban areas and its impact on air quality, ecosystems, and climate. Another MIRAGE field campaign kicks off this month, this time in Shanghai, China's largest city.

Eleven days can go by in no time, but their brevity was accentuated for 27 graduate students at a summer colloquium on 1–12 June. The goal was to give students a taste of fieldwork by having them organize and conduct mini–field experiments and draw meaningful results from the data.