Understanding Aerosol impacts on Deep Convective Clouds
Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Departmental Seminar Series
presents
Understanding Aerosol impacts on Deep Convective Clouds
a talk by
Senior Scientist
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Deep convective clouds (DCCs) play a crucial role in the general circulation, energy, and hydrological cycle of our climate system. How aerosol particles may influence DCCs could be very complicated due to convoluted microphysical and dynamical processes and feedback associated with deep convection. The large uncertainty has been obstructing us to achieve better weather and climate predictions. In this talk, I will present our recent understandings of how aerosols could change convection, extreme precipitation, and cloud anvil in upper atmosphere by serving as cloud condensation nuclei and ice nuclei, which are gained from process-level studies with both advanced observations and high-resolution model simulations. I will also demonstrate how aerosol-radiation interaction can escalate a regular precipitation event to a catastrophic flooding event. Some significant challenges and future directions will be discussed.
Dr. Jiwen Fan is a Senior Earth Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). She received her Ph.D. degree in 2007 from Texas A&M University. Her expertise encompasses atmospheric chemistry and aerosols, clouds, convection, and extreme storms. Her work contributes to improving physical understanding of the complex aerosol interactions with cloud microphysics and dynamics. Her current work includes (1) physical factors impacting severe storms, particularly under the context of urbanization, wildfires, and climate warming., (2) understanding meso-scale convective systems (MCSs) and improving global model capability in simulating MCSs, (3)development of cloud microphysics parameterizations for climate models, and (4) impacts of marine aerosol and dust on orographic mixed-phase clouds.
Jiwen has published 92 peer-reviewed journal papers, with a H-index 34 in ISI Web of Science. She won several prestigious research awards including 2015 AGU ASCENT award for exceptional mid-career scientists and 2018 AMS STEM Outstanding Service award. She was a recipient of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Research award.