This is a past event.

Dr. Stratocumulus or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Drizzle

Stratocumulus are widespread clouds that strongly impact Earth's radiative balance, but they are also very thin clouds that generally produce little precipitation.  When it does rain, it is weak and therefore categorized as drizzle. The talk will begin with an introduction into stratocumulus clouds and the physics of drizzle production. I will argue that despite its seemingly unimpressive nature, drizzle has important consequences for stratocumulus clouds, with an emphasis on our research on its effects on turbulence generation.  I will also argue that understanding the physics of drizzle in such clouds is a critical window into precipitation formation in a variety of cloud types. Our analysis of aircraft data quantifies the discrepancy between current theory and observations of drizzle formation rates, with our best estimate being about one order of magnitude.