Project Details
Projekt
Cloud response to volcanic eruptions (VolCloud)
Subject Area
Atmospheric Science
Term
since 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 398006378
Clouds are a key determinant of the Earth energy budget. In order to understand and quantify the impact of volcanic eruptions on climate, it is thus imperative to quantify the effects aerosols emitted to the troposphere have on clouds, as well as the cloud response to circulation changes. However, aerosol-cloud interactions are not well quantified at a fundamental level. The community researching aerosol-cloud interactions now increasingly turns to observations and simulations of clouds affected and unaffected by volcanic aerosol to detect and attribute changes. A volcanic eruption is an ideal “natural laboratory”, since it generates an aerosol perturbation that is independent of weather conditions. VolCloud thus has a two-fold, iterative role within VolImpact: it pushes the limits of knowledge on how clouds respond to aerosols by model and data analysis of the response of clouds to volcanic aerosol, and it makes use of this improved knowledge to help quantify the overall effective radiative forcing exerted by volcanic eruptions. Specific targets in the proposal phase are to (i) learn about how boundary-layer clouds in the (sub-)tropics respond to aerosol by studying the microphysical and the boundary-layer-dynamics response at the example of the Kilauea eruption 2020; to (ii) better understand and quantify the response of ice and mixed-phase clouds by implementing and evaluating new ice nucleation parameterisations for volcanic aerosol, and assessing the role of semi-direct effects; and to (iii) quantify the overall cloud response by contributing to the VolSeamless simulation and its analysis. This work is performed in close interaction within VolImpact in the common research projects, and specific cross-project collaboration especially with VolARC and VolPlume; as well as in international collaboration in particular with groups in the UK.
DFG Programme
Research Units
