Highlights will be written for high-level accomplishments and published journal articles of ASR research. Each ASR principal investigator (PI) is expected to submit at least one highlight per fiscal year.
Research Highlights
Recent Highlights
Amazon rainforest fires produce secondary ultrafine particles that may affect weather and climate
27 June 2024
Shrivastava, Manishkumar; Fan, Jiwen
Supported by:
Research area: Cloud-Aerosol-Precipitation Interactions
Particles in wildfire smoke can lower air quality and harm human health. Smoke aerosols can also influence weather and climate by modifying cloud formation and changing how much of the sun’s energy is reflected or absorbed by the atmosphere. Compared to larger particles directly emitted from fires, the formation and [...]
Cloud properties vary between the North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean even in similar environments
25 June 2024
McFarquhar, Greg
Supported by:
Research area: Cloud Distributions/Characterizations
Cold-air outbreaks (CAOs) occur when cold air moves from the poles over warmer oceans. Extensive boundary-layer clouds form during CAOs, which impacts Earth’s radiative balance. Prior observations of CAO clouds are very limited. Their properties depend on environmental conditions, and the processes responsible for that dependence are not well known, though [...]
Locally narrow droplet size distributions are ubiquitous in stratocumulus clouds
24 June 2024
Shaw, Raymond A
Supported by:
Research area: Cloud Processes
Cloud process rates such as drizzle formation depend on the assumed cloud droplet size distribution shape. These droplet size distributions are based on spatially averaged measurements of cloud droplet number concentration and diameter and are often represented in models as broad gamma distributions.
Climate change-resilient snowpack estimation
21 June 2024
Feldman, Daniel
Supported by:
Research area: Surface Properties
Climate change will create years where our mountains’ snowpack will be unlike anything we have observed in the past, but because our measurement systems for snowpack cannot move to new locations, our ability to measure this quantity is not resilient to climate change. We explored solutions for addressing this problem, [...]
Land surface influences on vertical velocity spectra in a convective mixed layer
13 June 2024
Williams, Ian N
Supported by:
Research area: Surface Properties
Cumulus clouds are coupled to the land surface, but the physical processes are not adequately understood. We used seven years of ARM Doppler lidar and surface observations to understand how surface processes affect updrafts relevant to cloud development.