Clouds are the imprints of the daily weather but also regulators of our climate. The role that shallow clouds in the subtropical trade wind regions play for our planet’s energy balance is one of the big questions for climate science. One particularly poorly understood aspect of these clouds is their organization: Clouds are not randomly distributed but rather show some sort of organization, which can often be seen from satellite images. Four different meso-scale cloud patterns are reoccurring in the trades: Sugar, Gravel, Flowers and Fish.

He studied these using long-term records of ground-based measurements, satellite observations and meteorological reanalyses. To identify periods during which a particular pattern is over the Barbados Cloud Observatory, he applied a neural network trained to detect these patterns to satellite imagery. The results suggest that due to the tight bound of the patterns to wind and air-mass origin, the patterns with the higher cloud fraction, Flowers and Fish, will be disfavoured in a warming climate with more equable sea-surface temperatures and fewer mid-latitudinal disturbances.

The research results presented by Schulz are under review for the journal “Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres”. A preprint version can be accessed at: https://www.essoar.org/doi/abs/10.1002/essoar.10505836.1.

About the award
The Outstanding Student Presentation Awards (OSPAs) are awarded to promote, recognize and reward undergraduate, Master’s and PhD students for quality research in the geophysical sciences. Each year, Sections recruit judges to assess and score student oral, poster, and eLightning presentations at meetings. Typically the top 2-5% of presenters in each Section are awarded an OSPA.

Contact
Hauke Schulz
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Email: hauke.schulz@we dont want spammpimet.mpg.de
Webpage Hauke Schulz