Climate and Cloud Physics
Global Climate modeling can be enhanced by the use of satellite and surface field measurements. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory researcher Chuck Long has developed the Total Sky Imager to remotely provide vital field measurements in real time. TSI uses a digital camera to collect hemispheric ”fish eye” images of the sky, which are then processed to infer what amount of the sky contains clouds at the monitored site.
Enlarged View- Modeling research on cloud and radiative processes.
- Data analysis and cloud property retrievals from ground-based remote sensing systems.
- Aerosol and cloud property retrievals from satellite-based instrumentation.
- Develop new process parameterization schemes for community climate models.
- Develop and evaluate new high-resolution global climate models.
- Develop instrumentation and conduct field observations for improving understanding of cloud processes and effects.
Much of the uncertainty in projections of global climate change is due to the complexity of clouds, aerosols, and cloud-aerosol interactions, and the difficulty of representing them in climate models. This challenge is addressed by a combination of field measurements and modeling as part of the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program. Improved instrumentation and methods for determining cloud and aerosol properties from surface and satellite measurements are developed. These retrievals are used to evaluate the clouds and aerosols simulated by global climate models. The evaluation guides further development of the cloud and aerosol parameterizations for the global climate models.
