Abstract:

Deep convective clouds play a critical role in precipitation, radiation, and the general circulation. Significant progress in our understanding of aerosol impacts on convective cloud microphysics, dynamics and radiative properties has been made over the past ~20 years, however, the role of aerosols in invigorating or enervating convective updrafts remains an area of significant debate in the scientific literature. Towards resolving this debate, the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement facility undertook the TRacking Aerosol Cloud interactions ExpeRiment (TRACER) in the southeastern Texas region during the period from October 2021 through September 2022. The major objective of the campaign was to collect state-of-the-art detailed observations of isolated convective cells throughout their lifecycle in varying aerosol and thermodynamic conditions to facilitate high-resolution modeling studies of aerosol-convection interactions. The seminar will highlight the scientific design, experimental set-up, data highlights, planned modeling studies and early science results from the TRACER campaign.