Detection of aerosol-cloud interactions in observations space

Project

A key problem in satellite-based analysis of aerosol-cloud interactions is the large and sometimes systematic uncertainty in the retrievals. ESR1 will perform the analysis in observations space (satellite-measured radiances) to assess signatures of aerosol-cloud-interactions without the need for retrievals in three steps: (1) information content analysis on the basis of simulations of aerosols and clouds and forward-simulated radiances; (2) optimisation of the detectability of aerosol-cloud co-variation in observations space through emulation based on large-scale Gaussian processes; (3) application of the emulator derivative for an assessment of the sensitivity of diverse observations signals to infer aerosol-induced perturbations to clouds.

Supervisors

Johannes Quaas (supervisor), Gustau Camps-Valls (co-supervisor), Ralf Giering (FastOpt, non-academic advisor)

Secondments

6 months at University of Valencia & 3 months at FastOpt, Hamburg

Enrolment in Doctoral degree

PhD in Meteorology at the University of Leipzig