Principal Investigator Chien Wang
Aerosols are the primary catalyst for liquid and ice cloud particle formation in the atmosphere. Changes in aerosol properties are thus expected to affect clouds and precipitation. Current global models still cannot explicitly resolve certain critical processes involving aerosol-cloud interaction and the influence of such interactions on precipitation. We develop and use a three-dimensional cloud-resolving model coupled with the size- and mixing-dependent aerosol module to study the detailed aerosol-cloud interaction and its impacts on precipitation and radiation. Some of these results have been incorporated in our global scale modeling efforts to improve the aerosol-climate model or to assist data analyses.