Greg McFarquhar
Phone: 217-265-5458
Fax: 217-244-4393
Email: mcfarq at atmos.uiuc.edu
(replace at with @ to send email)
Greg McFarquhar received his B.Sc. in mathematics and
physics from the University of Toronto,
Greg’s current research group includes 8 graduate students (Bryan Guarante, Eric Schneider, Andrea Smith, Junshik Um, Hailong Wang, Hee-Jung Yang, Gong Zhang and Henian Zhang) 2 research associates (Matt Freer and Mike Timlin) and 2 undergraduate students (Hilary Minor and Jack Scheff). He also collaborates regularly with other departmental members, including Larry Di Girolamo, Matt Gilmore, Brian Jewett and Bob Rauber. Greg also acts as the Chief Scientist for the ARM Aerial Vehicle Program (AAVP).
Research Interests:
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 4.5oC 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. Greg’s work at UIUC aims at making fundamental advances in our understanding of cloud properties and processes, and improving our ability to represent clouds in weather and climate models.
Greg has 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. 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 on radiation are represented in climate models; 3) how anthropogenic aerosols impact cloud properties and hence change regional and global water and energy cycles; 4) how cloud processes affect the evolution of hurricanes and mesoscale convective systems; 5) the fundamental nature of rain formation.
Greg’s work involves both modeling work and observational studies. Check back later for examples of current projects,
Field Studies:
The recent field studies in which he has participated include the Convection and Moisture Experiment 4 (CAMEX4, Jacksonville, FL), the Bow Echo and Mesoscale Vortex Experiment (BAMEX, St. Louis, MI), the Aircraft Icing Experiment-II (AIRS-II, Cleveland, OH), the Mixed-Phase Arctic Cloud Experiment (M-PACE, Prudhoe Bay, AK), the Tropical Cloud Systems and Processes study (TCSP, San Jose, Costa Rica) and the Tropical Western Pacific International Cloud Experiment (TWP-ICE, Darwin, Australia). Graduate students typically participate in both the collection of data during the experiments and the analysis of collected data. Check back later for examples of pictures from these projects.
Service Activities
Greg McFarquhar also works as the Mission Scientist for the ARM Aerial Vehicles Program (AAVP), which was previously named the ARM uninhabited Aerial Vehicles program (ARM UAV). An overview of the white paper describing the new directions of the AAVP is included here.