Welcome to the Land, Aerosol, and Cloud Interactions (LACI) Group! We are led by Dr. Gabrielle "Bee" Leung at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Human activities impact the atmosphere in many different ways, including changing aerosol emissions, land surface properties, and the background thermodynamic environment. Our research explores where and when those anthropogenic changes are most important for clouds and precipitation.
We use a combination of satellite data, field observations, and cloud-resolving models in our research. Read more about the tools we use here.
Learn more about our current projects here or click the icons below to learn more about our areas of interest!
news
- Bee's visit to Oxford AOPP has been a fantastic deep-dive into global kilometer-scale models. So far, she's been exploring spatial patterns of cloud fields as a metric to compare km-scale models and geostationary satellite observations---looking forward to bringing these tools back to Madison in the Fall! She presented a research report to the sub-department on the group's recent deforestation work, and had a great time connecting with the broader UK research community at the UK early-career cloud physics group symposium. Outside of work, the UK has been surprisingly fantastic in terms of weather, providing lots of opportunities for long bike rides through the Oxfordshire countryside.
- Our recent paper on deforestation impacts on convection over Borneo was just accepted for publication in JGR Atmospheres. In this paper, we use high-resolution models and object-tracking to show that land cover changes can have opposite effects on mid-day shallow cumulus clouds and evening deep convection. This diurnal structure is often overlooked in evaluating deforestation impacts, but is critical to understanding how clouds and rainfall respond to land cover changes. Catch more details at Bee's solicited (invited) EGU presentation in May!
- Bee arrived in Oxford, UK, to an unexpectedly sunny week! Bee is visiting the Climate Processes Group at the Department of Physics for the rest of the spring.
- Bee gave a seminar on multi-scale deforestation impacts on clouds and rainfall as part of the CPEP series. You can watch a recording of her seminar here.
- Bee is in Houston, TX this week to attend the AMS annual meeting. Come say hi at talks on Monday and Tuesday afternoon!
- We contributed high-resolution simulations of clouds at radiative-convective equilibrium to a model intercomparison project exploring how aerosols may impact clouds on climate timescales. Read the full paper, led by Guy Dagan, here.
- Bee is in Fort Collins, CO this week for the NASA INCUS science team meeting. She will give a science presentation on the CMF-moisture pick-up in the INCUS LES dataset and what these results mean for representing tropical convection.
- Read our latest pre-print, where we describe multi-scale deforestation impacts on convection in Southeast Asia. We find that deforestation can have contrasting effects on clouds depending on the time of day and position relative to the deforestation border.
- Bee is in Boulder, CO this week to attend the UCAR Members Meeting and the Early Career workshop.
- Bee gave a seminar to the Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Science at Florida State University. Her talk focused on how the mesoscale spatial pattern of aerosol and land cover changes is crucial for determining their overall impact on clouds and rainfall.