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Department of Energy
An anvil cloud looms over the Southern Great Plains where DOE and NASA climate scientists are headed to study the physics of convective clouds in a bid to improve models of the global climate.
As spring storms rumble across the Great Plains in the coming weeks, government scientists will have their heads in the clouds hoping to gain a better understanding of the dynamics at play so they can improve models of the global climate.
"One of the real areas of hot debate in our field these days is what happens to the strength of storms as the climate warms," Michael Jensen, a meteorologist with the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, told me today.
Jensen is leading a six week field campaign beginning Friday in Oklahoma to study why these storms form where they do, how they grow over time and what causes them dissipate. The data, to be collected with state-of-the-art radars, wind profilers, NASA aircraft and weather balloons, will allow scientists to improve models they use to predict how these storms will change as the climate warms.
Convective clouds
Current models are unable to accurately to reproduce these convective clouds. For example, the models tend to start forming them earlier in the day and produce really big storm clouds at the expense of the more common intermediate storms.
Convective clouds, or systems, are the towering masses formed by rising heat that can produce thunderstorms and other severe weather, including tornadoes such as those that swept across the southeast last weekend, killing several dozen people.
These so-called convective processes play a critical role in Earth's energy balance by redistributing heat and moisture in the atmosphere and triggering precipitation.
Although these are the processes that build up the storms that lead to severe weather, such as tornadoes, Jensen's team is most interested in "the much more typical afternoon spring and summer type thunderstorms that you experience in the plains," he said.
Field campaign
The experiment will employ a range of atmospheric measuring equipment on the DOE's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Southern Great Plains site in Oklahoma, such as a suite of radars to study the properties and evolution of clouds in three dimensions. Other instruments at the facility will measure winds and precipitation.
NASA participants will fly aircraft within and above the cloud systems to collect complementary data on the amount of moisture and structure of the clouds. "Now we need the weather to cooperate a little bit. We need it to rain some while we are out there," Jensen noted.
The suite of instruments all running at the same time should give the scientists a holistic view of convective processes including:
- the atmospheric conditions in which a convective cloud forms,
- how air motions within the cloud impact the subsequent growth and formation of precipitation,
- what types and sizes of cloud and precipitation occur within the different stages of the cloud life cycle
- and how the cloud system impacts the background atmosphere
The end goal is to provide the most complete characterization of convective cloud systems and their environment that has ever been obtained, providing information that has never before been available for representing these processes in global climate models.
"We know that one of the biggest uncertainties in the climate models is the representation of clouds and the feedbacks they have within the climate system," Jensen told me. "This is just one of the cloud types that we need to continue to understand better to improve the climate models even further."
More on climate and clouds:
- How do clouds affect Earth's climate?
- Warming experts stick their heads in the clouds
- Are mystery clouds of Venus a warning sign for Earth's climate?
- Photoblog: Tracks in the sky
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
Leave a Comment:
This is pretty exciting and important work... I hope those tea baggers aren't successful in their attempt to stifle science and replace it with political ideology and/or religious fundamentalist hand-waving.
Joe...you buy any of those carbon credits yet?
Bill are you implying that it's a waste of money to study cloud formation because it might lead to a better understanding of the global climate, which might threaten your little fantasy that we can dump untold billions of tons of heat trapping gasses into our atmosphere without trapping any heat?
Joe...
"I hope those tea baggers aren't successful in their attempt to stifle science and replace it with political ideology and/or religious fundamentalist hand-waving."
It could be worse...
I hope those liberals aren't successful in their attempt to stifle science by continueing to ruin the economy with welfarian policies and replace it with the political ideology of socialism and/or fundamentalist union handout-waving.
Without a strong economy, there is no money to research clouds/climate. At least we can find common ground on that issue.
Bill can't help himself. He's been told that climate change is all a liberal conspiracy, and he thinks that gives him a free rein to be flippant and derogatory about it. Ignorance is bliss.
jock...
Climate change is real. It has also been happening for tens of thousands of years...yes...even before mankind. The earth orbits the sun in an elliptical pattern. Every 10,000 years or so we get closer and farther from the sun.
The question isn't if there is climate change...that's a given. The question is it amplified by mankind. People from both sides don't really understand this. It doesn't help when the scientific community can agree amongst themselves either.
Jess, it is indeed a constant struggle between the right wing extremists and the left wing extremists. Fortunately for most of the past 235 years we've managed to find a reasonable and responsible middle ground where the benefits of the free enterprised system are balanced with government regulation to guard against the abuses of the free enterprise system. Personally I'd like to see the tax code reshuffled and put less tax burden on business, by provideding tax incentives for investment and job creation, and more on wealthy individuals to balance.
I don't necessarily agree that a welfare fundamentalist system would be worse than a low tax/weak government fundmentalist system. West Germany is a welfare state with high taxes. Somalia is a country with a weak government and low taxes.
Also Jess, you don't understand science. Scientists often disagree on the details. It's the nature of scientific investigation. I don't know if there are any scientists who would agree with the republican party position that can continue to dump untold billions of tons of heat trapping gasses into our atmosphere without affecting the amount of heat that is trapped. There is absolutely no reason to believe this, which the republican party, in their denial of climate science, is asserting.
Joe...
Agree with your post until... "Also Jess, you don't understand science." It's hard...scratch that...impossible for you to assertain what I do and don't know from 2 mini blog posts. Any suggestion to the contrary defies all logic.
I understand it quite well. I also understand the scientific process. I know that for every scienttist the left produces saying climate change is man made, an equally qualified scientist can be produced by the right to counter that claim. I also KNOW that the earths orbit is not that of a perfect circle. I understand that it is eliptical and changes over time thus heating and cooling the earth. Right now we are going into one of those natural orbits that makes us warmer. If you think that the ONLY cause for climate change is man made, then you only serve to fool yourself.
After the eruption of Krakatoa the entire world experience a mini ice age. Was that man made? Obviuosly no, but it did serve as a good example of how particulate matter in the atmosphere can affect the climate. (similar to man made pollution) Just like the orbit we are in, there are several other factors to consider, but to blame only one party for ignoring the issue is insane and flat out untrue. That's like saying all republicans hate the poor. Simply put, that is a flat out lie. You can't silo evryone into some nice camp that supports only your agenda, call everyone else in the other camp evil and expect it to be true.
For the sake of arguement let's say you are right... Let's say it is only republicans that dont' belive it. Do dems drive cars? Do they heat thier homes? Do they eat food produced by gas guzzling tractors? Etc...etc...etc... So are you equally willing to say dems are guilty of consuming just as much fossil fuels..all the while complaining about them making them nothing more than hypocrites? If so, then why only call out one party and not both?
Jess, the issue is not whether climate change is man made or not. No scientist that I'm aware of ever said so. We all know that the climate has been steadily warming for the past 13,000 or so years with a couple of interruptions. All climate scientists are fully aware of the eliptical nature of earth's orbit and the precession about the axis and all of them are fully versed in particulate matter from volcanoes and all other factors that you will be able to come up with. The issue is whether greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion are contributing to an observed increase in the rate of warming. The predominant view among the experts is that it is likely that greenhouse gasses are causing the rate of warming to accelerate and that this poses a dire threat to human civilization for a number of reasons.
The republican position seems to be that we can continue dumping limitless amounts of gasses that are known to trap heat in the atmosphere without trapping heat in the atmosphere. Some of them even claim that the icecaps are not melting even though there is photographic proof!!
I don't presume to speak for democrats because I disagree with a lot of their policies and rhetoric.
". It has also been happening for tens of thousands of years...yes...even before mankind."
I understand this; and every climate scientists in the world understands this. It is part of the reason we underatnd how the climate chages and why we are so sure we are affecting it.
" It doesn't help when the scientific community can agree amongst themselves either."
You can't get all scientists to agree on ANYTHING, which is one reason it is remarkable how much they DO agree on the fact that human industry affects climate change
" I know that for every scienttist the left produces saying climate change is man made, an equally qualified scientist can be produced by the right to counter that claim"
Then you don't know much. For one thing, climate scientists are not "produced" by the left; for another, at least 95% of climate scientists agree that humans are significantly affecting climate. Anyone who told you there is some kind of even ratio was simply lying.
"We all know that the climate has been steadily warming for the past 13,000 or so years with a couple of interruptions"
Not really. The climate coming out of the last ice age warmed to a peak about 8000 years ago and has been varyinf below that peak ever since, mostly for reasons that have nothing to do with orbital anomalies or ice age cycles. The ice age cycles do not form a smooth curve; they are more like a switch turning on and off.
" I understand that it is eliptical and changes over time thus heating and cooling the earth."
The Milankovich cycles do very little to heat and cool the Earth. The cycles are complex and the changes in solar radiation associated with them are very small - way too small to explain the ice ages. Ice ages might have been triggered by Milankovic cycles, but the extreme climate changes were caused by feedbacks in carbon dioxide, albedo, and ocean circulation, all things that can be triggered by our massive CO2 emissions.
"Right now we are going into one of those natural orbits that makes us warmer."
No, we are not; and changes in orbital anomalies are way too small to be measured over the scale of decades that we are discussing in recent climate change.
jess
Are you actually saying that scientists don't know that the earth's orbit is elliptical? Are you really saying that climate scientists, the vast huge majority of who agree with man made climate change, are unaware of ice ages or Krakatoa? If so then you obviously don't know how science works.
And when did anybody claim that democrats don't drive cars or use electricity? That's not the issue. The issue is that we as a society need to accept the facts that science is telling us, instead of the propaganda that those who have something to lose (oil companies) are feeding you.
Scientists have absolutely nothing to gain or lose from controlling carbon emissions. But oil companies have everything to lose. And you'd rather believe their shills? You are too naive.
Lets just hope the funds aren't diverted to feed the poor or some other Libtard scheme. :-(
Right, damn those hungry people, poor people, and scientists who want to understand the planet we live on. This is the country of me, my, and mine! and I will NOT share or believe that anything I am doing is wrong....
Oh when the fantasy all comes crashing down....