Statistical methods to quantify and visualise the complex behaviour of clouds in the climate system

External co-investigator: Graham Feingold, NOAA ESRL, Boulder Colorado

Postgraduate student: Rachel Sansom

This PhD project is using new modelling techniques to understand how cloud systems respond to changes in aerosols across a wide range of environments. The approach, using fast emulators of full cloud models, enables effectively thousands of simulations to be performed so that the statistical variability and behavior of the cloud systems can be mapped out. At present, limited case studies provide only a snapshot view of how clouds respond to aerosols, which is insufficient for understanding global effects. Recent research at Leeds pioneering this approach for global aerosol and single-cell cloud models shows great promise, and suggests that the much more ambitious problem of aerosol-cloud interaction can be tackled.