Researchers develop technique to understand how tiny atmospheric particles change elusive ice clouds
Monday, October 27, 2014 - 07:00
in Earth & Climate
Thin and wispy cirrus clouds skirt the scrutiny of current climate models. To uncover that missing information, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is leading an international effort to run coordinated numerical experiments on major climate models from all over the world. PNNL scientists and their collaborators at the University of Wyoming, the University of California, San Diego, and ETH Zurich in Switzerland refined a widely used numerical strategy called "nudging" so that the original model characteristics are correctly revealed. The technique offers a better way to study how atmospheric particles influence ice formation in clouds that affect the Earth's energy budget and influence precipitation.