Welcome to the home page of the Cloud Physics Group in the Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources at the University of California, Davis. We study clouds. This includes everything from your everyday, puffy cumulus clouds to thunderstorms and large cloud systems like extratropical cyclones. We are particularly interested in how the properties of individual cloud droplets and ice crystals impact our weather and climate including how much precipitation falls, where it falls, and how sunlight and heat are distributed in the atmosphere. Aerosol particles play a role in determining these cloud properties, and much of my work in the past has focused on aerosol-cloud interactions. We primarily use atmospheric models to address research questions related to these topics and are increasingly using observations. We are also interested in developing and improving these models in order to create better research tools and better weather and climate forecasts.

Group News

Summer 2023: Two more publications for the group! Hu and Igel (2024) on the latest from AMP and Igel (2024) about processes driving aerosol-cloud interactions in stratocumulus.
March 2023: The opinion paper on invigoration in deep convection led by Adam Varble and co-authored by Adele was a runner-up for the 2023 Paul Crutzen Publication Award!
March 2023: Lucas’s final dissertation chapter was published in ACP: Above-cloud concentrations of cloud condensation nuclei help to sustain some Arctic low-level clouds.
July 2023: Arthur successfully defended his PhD dissertation, “The Future of Bulk Microphysics Schemes”. He’ll be starting a postdoc at Columbia University this fall.
March 2023: Former undergraduate student member Abbey won an NSF GRFP award!
February 2023: Lucas successfully defended his PhD dissertation, “Ice, Liquid, and Aerosol: Mixed-Phase Cloud Properties and Processes in Real and Idealized Simulations”. Lucas has started a job with NASA already!
February 2023: Arthur’s second paper was published in JAMES describing the latest results from AMP.
August 2022: Congratulations to Arthur Hu for winning a presentation award from the AMS Cloud Physics Meeting!
July 2022: Adele’s recent paper on simulating rain was highlighted by the JAMES editor in Eos.
June 2022: Papers seem to come in pairs in this group. Adele’s latest paper on AMP was accepted in JAMES and two weeks later Lucas’ Arctic cloud dissipation paper was accepted in ACP.
January 2022: Nathan Pope won a student presentation award at the Annual AMS Meeting. Congratulations!
September 2021: Arthur and Abbey had papers accepted just one day apart. Arthur’s paper is about cloud droplet relative dispersion and Abbey’s is about the processes controlling aerosol-cloud interactions in non-precipitating stratocumulus clouds. We also welcome new member Hallie Pimperl to our group!
August 2021: Our group has been funded by the DOE ASR to study aerosol-induced convective invigoration. Adele also published a paper on this topic in GRL this month.
July 2021: Abbey Williams, an undergraduate member of our group, won an AMS Graduate Fellowship! She’ll be starting her graduate work at Scripps Institute of Oceanography this fall.
April 2021: Lucas’s first first-authored paper was posted in Early Online Release in the Journal of Hydrometeorology.
March 2021: A collaborative paper led by Ines Bulatovic (who visited us for two weeks in 2019) has been published in ACP about the importance of Aitken particles for cloud properties in Arctic mixed-phase clouds. A second paper led by collaborator Joe Sedlar was published just three days later on the formation and dissipation of Arctic clouds. Check them out on the Publications page!
March 2021: Lucas Sterzinger was accepted into the SIParCS summer internship program run by NCAR CISL. He’ll be working on cloud infrastructure for hosting NASA and NOAA satellite data.
Sep. 30, 2020: The DOE ASR released a profile article about Adele. You can find it here.
July 2020: Arthur Hu and Lucas Sterzinger both passed the QE this summer. Onward to graduation!
Dec. 2020: The first paper on the AMP scheme was published in JAMES.
Dec. 2020: Lucas Sterzinger and Arthur Hu presented their research at the AGU meeting.
Nov. 15, 2019: Amy Yu presented her MS exit seminar. Congratulations, Amy, on completing your MS thesis!
Sep. 6, 2019: Lea Tong presented her MS exit seminar. Lea is the first student from the Cloud Physics group to graduate. Congratulations, Lea!
June 2019: Nick Falk’s paper on ice microphysics in supercells was published in Monthly Weather Review.
Nov. 7, 2017: Lucas Sterzinger describes his undergraduate research at the University of North Dakota with Dr. Mullendore in a Unidata blog.