Researchers unravel process for the formation of rainstorms

Violent thunderstorms can often cause torrential rain, which pose a threat for both humans and the infrastructure. Until now such extreme weather phenomena have been very poorly understood. However, using advanced simulations ...

No limits to human effects on clouds

Understanding how clouds affect the climate has been a difficult proposition. What controls the makeup of the low clouds that cool the atmosphere or the high ones that trap heat underneath? How does human activity change ...

Pollution teams with thunderclouds to warm atmosphere

Pollution is warming the atmosphere through summer thunderstorm clouds, according to a computational study published May 10 in Geophysical Research Letters. How much the warming effect of these clouds offsets the cooling ...

Connecting the dots on aerosol details

Predicting future climate change hangs on understanding aerosols, considered the fine details in the atmosphere. Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the National Center for Atmospheric Research used a ...

Modeled clouds in the tropics get a reality check

Due to a scarcity of useful observations to guide model development, Earth system models often miss the mark in predicting tropical clouds and their effects on incoming and outgoing energy in the atmosphere. For most of the ...

New technique allows study of clouds in 3-D

With two off-the-shelf digital cameras situated about 1 kilometer apart facing Miami's Biscayne Bay, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists David Romps and Rusen Oktem are collecting three-dimensional data on cloud ...

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