Aircraft will fly through cold clouds over the North Atlantic to measure how ice and water droplets mix, in an effort to resolve one of the biggest uncertainties in climate modelling. The problem is that clouds containing both ice and water are poorly understood, yet they strongly influence how much the planet warms. If warming makes these clouds brighter by increasing water droplets, they could slow global temperature rise. But if warming also releases more ice-nucleating particles from exposed Arctic soils, more ice could form, making the clouds darker and accelerating warming. Current models cannot say which effect will dominate. The team will combine aircraft campaigns, year-long Arctic measurements, and shipborne sampling to track where ice-nucleating particles come from and how ice forms. They will feed this data into high-resolution simulations of the Met Office’s weather and climate model, then test the results against satellite observations. If successful, the work will shrink the uncertainty in Earth’s climate sensitivity—the warming expected from a doubling of CO₂. Previous work suggests that adjusting the ice-to-water ratio in models to match satellite data can shift that sensitivity by 1.5°C. Better predictions would help governments plan infrastructure, agriculture, and flood defences with greater confidence.
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Clouds containing a mixture of ice and water (mixed-phase clouds) are likely to change in response to climate change. It is expected that warming will cause an increase in the amount of water and a decrease in the amount of ice in these clouds. Because water droplets reflect more solar radiation than ice crystals (and cause less precipitation), the clouds are expected to become brighter, thereby causing a cooling effect (or negative feedback) on the climate system at mid- to high-latitudes. The magnitude of the cloud-phase feedback is very uncertain. If the feedback is strong then global temperatures will increase more slowly in future, but if it is weak then temperatures will increase more rapidly. It was recently shown that adjusting the ratio of ice and water in a climate model to match satellite observations could increase Earth's equilibrium climate sensitivity (warming with a doubling of CO2) by 1.5 degrees; hence, Earth may warm faster than thought. The feedback process is further complicated by the fact that the special particles, ice nucleating particles (INPs), which trigger ice production, may be more abundant in a warmer world where INP sources, such as glacial valleys, will be covered in ice and snow for less time. Increased INP concentrations would mean more ice in clouds and lead to a positive feedback. These two opposing feedbacks contribute to what we refer to as the cloud-phase feedback. This proposal will improve our understanding of how ice particles form in clouds and how this affects the cloud-phase feedback. Ice formation is the key process that controls this feedback. The problem can be broken down into two parts: First, we will address the open questions related to the chain of processes that link initial ice formation to the reflectivity of the clouds and how the reflectivity will change with warming. We have designed an aircraft campaign targeted at conditions of most relevance to the cloud feedback problem: moderately cold clouds that will be most sensitive to changes in temperature, and where high INP concentrations are likely to influence large regions of the N Atlantic. These cold-air outbreaks clouds provide an ideal meteorological situation for studying the formation and evolution of the kinds of shallow mixed-phase clouds which are important for cloud feedbacks. Second, we will address the paucity of knowledge on the sources, distribution and seasonal cycles of INPs at the mid- to high-latitudes. Our strategy is to use measurements to identify sources of INPs and use this information to inform the inclusion of mid- to high-latitude sources in our global model of INPs. We will perform new long-term measurements through a whole year and ship borne measurements through the key source regions in the Arctic. We have built a substantial network of Partners who will contribute INP data across the northern and southern mid- to high-latitudes which will allow us to expand our study to the globe. The new knowledge on cloud processes and INP will be used to improve the representation of mixed-phase clouds in the Met Office weather and climate model. The model will be run at very high spatial resolution so that the individual clouds in the cold-air outbreaks can be simulated. The model will be tested and improved by comparing it to our measurements as well as against satellite observations. We will then extend this study to contrasting cases from the Southern Ocean and the other side of the Atlantic. We anticipate the new knowledge will lead to a greatly improved representation of these climatically critical clouds. We will then perform a sensitivity analysis on selected cases in order to test how these cloud systems will respond to climate change. Finally, we will use the new knowledge to develop a plan for improving how mixed-phase clouds are treated in global climate models so that this work can be carried out in a follow-on project.
Benjamin Murray (Principal Investigator)James McQuaid (Co-Investigator)Kenneth Carslaw (Co-Investigator)Paul Field (Co-Investigator)Steve Arnold (Co-Investigator)
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