Research on examining cloud structure by high-resolution photography from the ground appeared in the viewfinder of Eos, an online publication of the American Geophysical Union.
In April, Eos spotlighted the paper “High-resolution photography of clouds from the surface: Retrieval of optical depth of thin clouds down to centimeter scales.” The paper featured research at the ARM Climate Research Facility’s Southern Great Plains (SGP) atmospheric observatory.
Published in March by Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, the paper discussed an Atmospheric System Research-funded project in which scientists used a Fujifilm FinePix S1 digital camera to capture the sky directly above the SGP site in July and August of 2015. In a time series of images, the camera caught a cloud cluster 2 kilometers above the surface at 4-centimeter resolution—up to five orders of magnitude higher than satellites.
Looking pixel by pixel, researchers discovered significant variation in the clouds’ structure, including differences in how light scattered or passed through. The findings could help improve climate models as scientists continue to learn more about the physics of small, low clouds.
Stephen E. Schwartz of Brookhaven National Laboratory authored the paper with Dong Huang, a former Brookhaven colleague who now works at Science Systems and Applications Inc. in Maryland and Daniela Viviana Vladutescu of the New York City College of Technology (City University of New York).
# # #The ARM Climate Research Facility is a DOE Office of Science user facility. The ARM Facility is operated by nine DOE national laboratories.