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The most fundamental and complex problems in climate and weather research
today are our poor understandings of the basic properties of clouds and our
inability to determine quantitatively the many effects cloud processes have
on
weather and climate. Estimates from current climate models indicate that
Earth's average surface temperature will warm from 1.5 to 4.5°C by 2100 due
to
increases in greenhouse gases. Most of the very large uncertainty in this
estimate is attributed to different treatments of clouds in climate models.
On
the weather scale, the energy produced by one day of rain within a hurricane is 200 times the worldwide electrical generating capacity, and the
destructive
force of hurricane precipitation causes the world's greatest natural
disasters, yet we have not yet developed a quantitative understanding of the cloud processes that release this energy. I have developed complimentary
research programs addressing the most pressing issues in weather and climate research under the overarching theme of clouds and their relation to climate and weather using a combination of field observations, satellite retrievals
and numerical modeling studies.
My specific research efforts are advancing our understanding of 1) how
clouds
affect the transmission of radiation through the atmosphere; 2) how clouds
and
their impacts are represented in climate and weather models; 3) how cloud
processes affect hurricane evolution; and 4) how anthropogenic aerosols
affect
clouds and Earth's energy and water cycle. I currently receive funding from
the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National
Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to support my research. In the past 5
years, my graduate students and I have participated in field projects in
Darwin Australia (tropical convection and cirrus), Prudhoe Bay Alaska
(Arctic
mixed-phase clouds), Cape Verde Islands, Africa (impact of Saharan dust on
hurricane genesis), San Jose Costa Rica (hurricane genesis and
intensification), St. Louis Missouri (bow echoes), Houston Texas (aerosol
impacts on clouds) and Cleveland Ohio (freezing rain). The most exciting
aspect of my work is the linkage of these field observations with numerical
models, including cloud resolving, mesoscale and single column models.
Future
modeling and observational studies will examine aerosols, clouds and
convection over Oklahoma, aerosol impacts on Arctic clouds over Alaska,
investigations of winter cyclone snow bands and continued work on
hurricanes.
Graduate students and postdoctoral research associates are active
collaborators in all my projects, with my students presenting their research at conferences and publishing papers in the scientific literature. I am
always
looking for more students to join my group and help me determine how we can
improve our knowledge of the properties and impacts of clouds together.
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