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January 2023:  Graduate student Peter Brechner and undergraduate students Ethan Schaefer and Julian Schima pose in front of the NASA P-3 aircraft before a flight to sample winter storms during the NASA Investigations of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS) project. Data collected during this campaign will provide valuable information to improve modeling and remote sensing of winter storms.

December 2022: 

Members of the cloud physics group in Chicago at dinner following presentations at the 2022 American Geophysical Union fall meeting.

June 2022:

A group photo showing all the personnel (many from the OU cloud physics group) and assets used during the 2022 NSF-funded Experiment of Sea Breeze Convection, Aerosols, Precipitation, and Environment (ESCAPE) field campaign. Data collected during this experiment will help us understand the influence of dynamics and aerosols on the evolution of isolated convective storms.

 

April 2022:

Current and past members of the cloud physics group assemble for a spring dinner and get together.

February 2022:

The OU cloud physics group resumes their participation in research flights after a pause during the pandemic.  The NASA Investigations of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS) project is taking place based out of NASA Wallops. Data collected during this campaign will provide valuable information to improve modeling and remote sensing of winter storms.

December 2021:

In-person conference participation of the cloud physics group resumes at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans, LA.

October 2018: Graduate student Siddhant Gupta is seen readying a cloud probe

before a flight of the NASA P-3 during the Observations of Aerosols Above Clouds and their Interactions (ORACLES) field experiment based out of São Tomé in Africa. Siddhant along with other members of the McFarquhar group (Rose Miller and Greg McFarquhar) participated in this experiment which will provide invaluable data about how biomass burning from the African continent affect the properties of clouds off the west coast of Africa, ultimately allowing us to improve Earth system models and satellite retrievals of cloud properties.

Aug. 2017: Greg McFarquhar and his grad students Siddhant Gupta & Rose Miller are seen  with others in front of the NASA P-3 aircraft in Sao Tome, Africa during ORACLES, a project designed to sample the impact of  biomass aerosols on extensive stratocumulus decks over the SE Atlantic Ocean.

 

November 2017: Prof. McFarquhar is seen on board the Aurora Australis in Hobart, Australia just before it departed to Antarctic for its first cruise as part of the Measurements of Aerosols, Radiation and Clouds over the Southern Ocean Experiment (MARCUS) funded by the Department of Energy. Prof. McFarquhar and several of his students are headed back to Hobart in January 2018 to collect a set of data on clouds, aerosols, radiation and precipitation over the Southern Oceans using the National Science Foundation/National Center for Atmospheric Research G-V aircraft during the Southern Oceans Cloud Radiation Aerosol Transport Experimental Study (SOCRATES).

Schima, J., G.M. McFarquhar, U. Romatschke, J. Vivekanandan, J. D’Alessandro, J. Haggerty, C. Wolff, W. Wu, and E. Schaefer, 2022: Characterization of the vertical structure of Southern Ocean boundary layer clouds using airborne radar, lidar and in-situ cloud data: Results from SOCRATES. J. Geophys. Res., 127, e2022JD037277. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JD037277.

This paper, first authored by undergraduate student Julian Schima uses remote sensing and in-situ data from Southern Ocean clouds collected during the SOCRATES field campaign to produce vertical phase profiles of subfreezing boundary layer clouds. When examining the occurrence of clouds with supercooled large droplets, it was found that such conditions frequently occurred 100-200 m below cloud top, which was dominated by supercooled water from smaller drops.  Further, convective clouds were around 3 times as likely to contain ice, and were more vertically heterogeneous, compared to stratiform clouds