Study of Aerosol/Cloud/Radiation Interactions Over the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Southern Great Plain Site

While considerable advances in the understanding of atmospheric processes and feedbacks in the climate system have led to a better representation of these mechanisms in general circulation models, the greatest uncertainty in predictability of future climate arises from clouds and their interactions with radiation. To explore this uncertainty, the cloud resolving model has evolved as one of the main tools for understanding and testing cloud feedback processes in climate models, whereas the indirect effects of aerosols are closely linked with cloud feedback processes. In this study, we incorporated an existing parameterization of cloud drop concentration (Chuang et al. 2002a) with aerosol prediction from a global chemistry/aerosol model (IMPACT) (Rotman et al. 2004; Chuang et al. 2002b; Chuang et al. 2005) into the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) cloud resolving model (Chin 1994; Chin et al. 1995; Chin and Wilhelmson 1998). This was done to investigate the effects of aerosols on cloud/precipitation properties and the resulting radiation fields over the Southern Great Plains (SGP) site.