This award supports a special symposium at the 2011 American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) annual conference. The symposium will address the linkages between precipitation and other atmospheric processes, such as nucleation, and formation of cloud droplets and ice crystals, as well as the effect of changes in aerosol particles due to human activities on precipitation, the radiative and dynamic properties of clouds, etc.
This award will provide travel support for four early career scientists to attend and present as invited speakers at the symposium, including several women.
Precipitation plays a crucial role in water resources. Flooding, drought, and snowpack levels are all concerns in present-day and future climates. The initiation of precipitation is affected by the presence of aerosol particles in the atmosphere, some of which are derived from human activities. At the present time, it is not clear whether, and how, changes in the nature and abundance of atmospheric particles affect precipitation formation in warm clouds (e.g., drizzle) and in cold clouds (e.g., snow). The complexity of the aerosol-precipitation issue demands a need for a greater connection of the cloud physics-research and atmospheric aerosol-research communities if continued progress on this issue is to be made. This project brought together aerosol researchers and cloud and precipitation researchers at the 2011 American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR) annual conference for a special symposium on Aerosols and Precipitation. Participants from Europe, North America, and Asia contributed recent research findings to the Symposium, highlighting some of the many ways that aerosol particles have been shown to, or are postulated to, affect precipitation. In particular, this project provided travel support for four early career scientists to present invited papers, and to encourage their continued research into this important problem. The Symposium also attracted distinguished senior scientists who provided their perspectives on key issues. The invited and contributed Symposium presentations presented a broad look at how human activities may affect precipitation. The project resulted in strengthening of the connections between the aerosol-research and cloud- and precipitation-research communities, which use distinct but complementary approaches to unraveling aerosol-precipitation connections.
