SIMPHAC · The impact of Secondary Ice processes on Mixed-PHAse Clouds and Climate
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-09-01 → 2023-09-19
- EU contribution
- €153,085
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
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Results in brief
The impact of Secondary Ice processes on Mixed-PHAse Clouds and Climate
Clouds may never have had a more important meaning to society as today. They regulate the Earth's energy balance and are key drivers of how climate responds to changing greenhouse gas levels. Clouds generate precipitation, which has a direct impact on the supply of fresh water on Earth. Clouds however are the most elusive component of the climate system, and the largest source of predictive error in any atmospheric and climate model. Of all cloud types, mixed-phase (liquid water + ice) clouds are by far the most uncertain, and dominate the energy balance and precipitation in many regions of the globe. At the heart of this uncertainty is the inability to capture ice crystal formation and the explosive multiplication that can occur, which in turn fundamentally affect cloud radiative properties and lifetime. This phenomenon is known as Secondary Ice Production (SIP), but the exact mechanisms and their relative importance remain unknown; as a result a description of these processes remains incomplete in weather forecast and climate models.The main goal was to implement accurate mathematical descriptions of these processes in weather forecast and climate models and quantify their impacts on cloud. Our results indicated that from all SIP mechanisms, collisional break-up is the most effective and the inclusion of this mechanism can improve cloud representation at both weather forecasting and climate model scales
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Clouds may never have had a more important meaning to society as they have today. They regulate the Earth's energy balance and are key drivers of how climate responds to changing greenhouse gas levels. Moreover, they generate precipitation, which has a direct impact on the supply of fresh water on Earth. Clouds however are the most elusive component of the climate system, and the largest source of predictive error in any atmospheric and climate models. Of all cloud types, mixed-phase (consisting of both liquid water and ice) clouds are by far the most uncertain, while they dominate the energy balance and precipitation in many regions of the globe. At the heart of this uncertainty is the inability to capture ice crystal formation and the explosive multiplication that can occur, which in turn fundamentally affect cloud processes. The exact mechanisms involved and their relative importance remain unknown; as a result a description of these processes is currently missing in weather forecast and climate models. Our aim is to resolve this ice formation “paradox”, by quantitatively understanding the mechanisms responsible for enhanced cloud ice levels, and develop parameterizations of these processes for use in numerical models. For this purpose we will use state-of-the-art highresolution models, a unique laboratory dataset and in-situ observations, while our parameterizations will be tested in a weather forecast model. Our initial focus will be in the Arctic, the most climatically sensitive region of the planet, but results have the potential to improve mixed-phase cloud representation at lower latitudes as well. As clouds are a critical component of the climate system, improving cloud-ice representation in models is expected to result in more accurate weather predictions and future climate projections
Original text from CORDIS.
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Data: CORDIS, © European Union