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
Soot particle variations affect climate modeling
6 July 2020
Fierce, Laura
Supported by:
Research area: Aerosol Properties
Black carbon, or soot, enters the air mainly as a byproduct of fuel combustion and absorbs sunlight, leading to a strong warming effect on the Earth’s atmosphere. The exact atmospheric impact, however, remains uncertain and not well understood. This analysis shows that a particle’s shape and chemical composition can vary [...]
When urban and natural emissions hang out at night
17 June 2020
Fast, Jerome D
Supported by:
Research area: Aerosol Processes
Human-caused pollution exerts an important but uncertain control on the formation of secondary organic aerosol particles from atmospheric oxidation of volatile organic compounds naturally emitted by plants. A research team led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy examined the interaction between evening emissions from the San Francisco Bay [...]
Automated identification of cloud types at the ARM Southern Great Plains site
16 June 2020
Gustafson, William I.; Riihimaki, Laura Dian
Supported by:
Research area: Cloud Distributions/Characterizations
Different types of clouds have different radiative forcing. This means researchers quantifying the role of clouds on the global energy budget, as well as regional or global water cycles, need accurate classification of cloud types for Earth system models. A team of researchers, including scientists at the U.S. Department of [...]
Confronting the challenge of modeling cloud and precipitation microphysics
15 June 2020
van Lier-Walqui, Marcus; Morrison, Hugh Clifton
Supported by:
Research area: Cloud Processes
The state of the art in cloud microphysics modeling is reviewed and remaining challenges, which produce biases in weather and climate forecasts, are identified. It is argued that current approaches are unlikely to adequately address these challenges, and new approaches are needed that build upon recent advancements in observations, modeling, [...]
Understanding the simulated phase partitioning of arctic single-layer, mixed-phase clouds in E3SM
11 June 2020
Liu, Xiaohong
Supported by:
Research area: Cloud Processes
Cloud physical processes are important for the production and sustenance of mixed-phase clouds, but their crude parameterizations generally result in large uncertainties in the phase partitioning of mixed-phase clouds simulated in general circulation models (GCMs). The representation of cloud physical processes such as primary ice nucleation, turbulence, and detrainment from [...]