Clouds play a critical role in Earth’s climate through the reflection, absorption and emission of radiation, the vertical transport of heat and moisture and the generation of precipitation and its associated latent heat release and evaporation. Despite ever increasing computational power and model sophistication, the poor representation of cloud processes continues to be one of the major sources of uncertainty in numerical simulations of climate and weather. In order to adequately understand the role of clouds and improve their parameterization in numerical model, fundamental (process) studies on all scales important to clouds formation, evolution and dissipation are required.
Precipitation is another integral part of the Earth’s hydrological cycle. Forecasts and simulations from models applied to scales of motions ranging from global to mesoscale exhibit substantial uncertainty due to the parameterization of precipitating clouds in these models. Uncertainties in the mechanics of precipitation processes continue to cloud our ability to represent these processes in models. At the same time, the detailed observations of updraft and downdrafts and precipitation structures needed to evaluate explicit model simulations of precipitating cumulus clouds and the associated stratiform regions are limited. Such small-scale quantitative measurements of microphysics and dynamics in precipitation are essential in our effort to understand atmospheric dynamics and improve the representation of climate-rainfall feedbacks in numerical models.
Research Highlights
Latest presentation
- Presentation by H. Kalesse during the Atmospheric Systems Research (ASR) meeting at Crystal City, Virginia, March 12-16, 2012, entitled: Climatology of cirrus clouds dynamics at the ARM SGP using profiling Doppler radar measurements
- Presentation by H. Kalesse during the Atmospheric Systems Research (ASR) meeting at Crystal City, Virginia, March 12-16, 2012, entitled: A cloud and precipitation classification for MC3E
- Presentation by P. Kollias during the Atmospheric Systems Research (ASR) meeting at Bethesda, Maryland, March 15-19, 2010, entitled: ARM Scanning Radars
- Presentation by P. Kollias during the EarthCARE Workshop at Kyoto Japan, June 10-12, 2009 entitled: “Simulations of the EarthCARE CPR Doppler measurements using ARM observations”.
In print
- Remillard, J., P. Kollias, E. Luke and R. Wood, 2012,: Marine Boundary Layer Cloud Observations at the Azores. Accepted to J. of Climate
Upcoming Meetings
- The 16th International Conference on Clouds and Precipitation will be held in Leipzig, Germany, July 30 – August 03, 2012
- The 1st Pan-Global Atmosphere System Studies (GASS) Conference will be held in Boulder CO USA, 10-14 September 2012
Links
Web links to radar meteorology tutorials, other radar meteorology groups, data resources.