This Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Research Program project is exploring the response of clouds composed of liquid water (as opposed to clouds cold enough to form ice-phase clouds) as they change to air-suspended particles (aerosols). This project is using Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) observations, geostationary satellite retrievals, and observationally constrained large-eddy simulations (LESs) to untangle the impacts of aerosols on marine boundary layer cloud properties from the impacts of large-scale conditions (weather patterns ranging from 1,000 to 2,500 kilometers across) on cloud dynamics with advanced statistical methods. The team is also working to determine the key cloud processes controlling net radiative forcing—the heating effect—from aerosol‒cloud interactions. The goal is to reduce uncertainty in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model.
Coming soon
The research team is working to publish all the developed observational data analysis in the ARM data archive, which would make them more broadly discoverable by the ARM/atmospheric system research communities.
