Aerosol-Cloud-Turbulence Interactions
2023 Faculty Research Award
AWARD PERIOD: 2023-2025
Luc Deike, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the High Meadows Environmental Institute, and Marissa Weichman, assistant professor of chemistry, will explore the role of ice nucleation — an important process in cloud formation physics — to better understand the dynamics of aerosol-cloud-turbulence interactions. Using a novel experimental cloud chamber, the researchers will investigate the efficiency of various types of aerosol particles to seed ice nucleation and cloud droplet growth. Ice nucleating particles have particularly important roles in cloud freezing processes, precipitation formation, and cloud radiative properties, and are therefore critical for understanding weather and climate. A better understanding of this process has potential to improve climate predictability in the coming decades.
Undergraduate interns will assist Deike and Weichman in projects using the cloud chamber and engage in research during the summer that spans atmospheric chemistry, spectroscopy, the physics of turbulence and aerosol science.
Participating Departments
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
- High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI)
- Department of Chemistry
Faculty
