Prof. V. (Ram) Ramanathan
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California at San Diego
It is remarkable that our general circulation climate models are able
to explain the observed temperature trends during the last century
solely through variations in greenhouse gases, aerosols and solar
irradiance. This implies that the role of clouds in planetary albedo
has not changed during the last 100 years by more than ±0.3% (out of 29
%). This seemingly improbable hypothesis has not been tested thus
far. Another fundamental question we have to address is: Is the
planetary albedo hovering around 29% , because of the need to maintain
a habitable climate?; or is it sheer chance that the planet settled
into the 29% albedo? There is practically no theory for either of these
two issues.
New discoveries await us in a serious quest that sheds some
observational insights into the processes by which aerosols and clouds
regulate the albedo.
Professor Ramanathan will describe a new observing system that is
designed to address the albedo regulation problem. It consists of
vertically stacked and multiple UAVs (light weight and long range)
carrying miniaturized aerosol-cloud-turbulence-radiation instruments.
A campaign with 3 stacked UAVs was completed this year in the Indian
Ocean and results from that experiment will be described to suggest
that this new platform, in conjunction with models and other
observations, offers a promising avenue for solving this outstanding
problem in climate and climate change.
Friday October 13 at 3:30pm in FL2-1022.
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