Anthony Del Genio NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Goddard Institute for Space Studies Winner of the 2017 Nordberg Award

 
"Cloud Feedback on Climate Change - Are We There Yet?"
  

Clouds pose a unique challenge to our understanding of climate change because of the many roles they play. They regulate the extent to which sunlight is absorbed by the planet but also the extent to which the Earth emits radiation to space. Through precipitation, they link the global energy cycle with the global water cycle. Via processes at the scales of cloud droplets and crystals, they act as the agent of important effects of aerosol particles on the forcing of climate change. Via their macroscopic interactions with the environment, they exert feedbacks that can amplify or mitigate climate change. It is not surprising, therefore, that clouds play an outsized role in the spread of future climate projections by today’s global models. NASA satellite datasets and field experiments have held modelers’ feet to the fire, increasingly confronting us with process-level information that demands more realistic representations of how clouds affect climate. This talk will describe some of the ways in which cloud modelers are being dragged into the real world by NASA datasets, and how we may finally be getting there after a very long trip.

About the Speaker

Tony Del Genio has been a Research Physical Scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) since 1985. He came to GISS in 1978 as a National Research Council postdoctoral scientist to analyze Pioneer Venus images. He later joined the GISS global climate modeling group to develop parameterizations of moist convective storms and clouds using satellite data and to understand their role in climate change. He is still trying. Del Genio has participated as a team member in the NASA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and is currently a team member in the Global Precipitation Measurement and CloudSat/CALIPSO missions. He is also co-chair of the Convective Processes Working Group for the Department of Energy Atmospheric System Research program and a member of the imaging team for the Cassini mission to Saturn. Del Genio represents the Goddard Earth Sciences Division in the new Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration and is a co-lead of the NASA Nexus for Exoplanet System Science. He has published 158 refereed papers. Del Genio is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and American Geophysical Union and a recipient of the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal.

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