Ling Zou Email & Phone Number

Cirrus clouds are fundamentally important for the radiation budget of the Earth-Atmosphere system and have significant impact on climate. Ice crystals scatter and reflect incoming solar radiation back to space, leading to a cooling of the system. However, ice crystals also absorb and partly re-emit terrestrial infrared radiation, leading to a warming of the system. Up to now the net effect of cirrus clouds on the radiation budget is uncertain. This uncertainty is mainly due to the complexity of microphysics in cirrus clouds, e.g. different nucleation mechanisms for ice crystals involving solution droplets and ice nuclei.Within this project, together with the colleagues of the Simulation Laboratory Climate Science at Jülich Supercomputing Center of Forschungszentrum Jülich, I investigate the occurrence and formation processes of cirrus clouds from remote-sensing observations and model simulations. The focus is on cirrus clouds in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UT/LS) region. Coupled dynamical, chemical, and microphysical processes in the UT/LS region are known to play an essential role in climate change. Model simulations for this region, including the representation of cirrus, need to be critically evaluated and improved.

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  Wuhan University

  Physical Geography (Atmospheric Science)