Atmospher Sci & Global Chg
Staff Awards & Honors

June 2016

PNAS Cover Features Research by Three PNNL Atmospheric Scientists

PNAS cover, May 24, 2016 Used with permission by Preceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Enlarge Image.

Steve Ghan

Ian Kraucunas

Phil Rasch

Congratulations to Drs. Steven Ghan, Ian Kraucunas and Philip Rasch. They are co-authors of research depicted on the cover of the May 24, 2016 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS.  The work, "Improving Our Fundamental Understanding of the Role of Aerosol-cloud Interactions in the Climate System," was a result of a multi-institutional Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium held in 2015.

The colloquium was motivated by the seeming lack of progress in reducing the amount of uncertainty that still remains in understanding how clouds and atmospheric particles, called aerosols, interact to change the Earth's energy balance. The attendees, a who's-who of scientific experts on the aerosol-cloud interaction processes, sought to understand why these effects are so difficult to capture in climate models and what needs to be done to move the science forward.

The work summarizes the key aspects of the presentations made at the Sackler Colloquium.  The complete program and video recordings of most presentations are available on the NAS website.

Sponsor: PNNL work at the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium and the paper were sponsored by the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Decadal and Regional Climate Prediction using Earth System Models (EaSM) Program and by the DOE's Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research Earth System Modeling Program.

Research Area: Climate & Earth Systems Science

Reference: Seinfeld JH, C Bretherton, KS Carslaw, H Doe, PJ DeMott, EJ Dunlea, G Feingold, S Ghan, AB Guenther, R Kahn, I Kraucunas, SM Kreidenweis, MJ Molina, A Nenes, JE Penner, KA Prather, V Ramanathan, V Ramaswamy, PJ Rasch, AR Ravishankara, D Rosenfeld, G Stephens and R Wood. 2016. "Improving Our Fundamental Understanding of the Role of Aerosol-cloud Interactions in the Climate System." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(2): 5781-5790. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1514043113