Research
We are broadly interested in scale interactions in the atmosphere and how best to represent these in weather and climate models in order to build resilience in water-susceptible regions. We use laboratory experiments to constrain small-scale parameters, such as ice-nucleating efficiency of different particles or ice crystal growth rates, and high-resolution models to understand the effect of these parameters on large-scale variables of interest, such as surface temperatures or rainfall rates. Some themes of interest include how increasing aridity in the Southwest may feedback on rainfall patterns or affect solar energy output and how the efficiency of precipitation formation may change as the atmosphere warms.
Latest News
| 18 August 2025 | Welcome to Ashlynne Gary, our newest group member, who will start her PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from Fall 2025! |
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| 22 August 2025 | Sylvia’s article on moisture-precipitation couplings in mesoscale convective systems was published in the Journal of Atmospheric Science here. |
| 14 August 2025 | Edgardo’s article on ice optical sensitivities of cloud-radiative heating was published in Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics. |
| 11-12 August 2025 | Edgardo and Thabo are visiting collaborators at the National Center for Atmospheric Research through our CORE award. |
| 29 July 2025 | Thabo’s first first-author article on precipitation efficiency in storm-resolving models was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. |
| 21 July 2025 | Sylvia is in Monte Verita, Switzerland to present at the Ice at the Microscale conference. |
| 21 May 2025 | Sylvia is flying to Austria to begin an Ida Pfeiffer Professorship this summer at the University of Vienna. |
| 19 May 2025 | We had a 2025-2026 proposal to the Salt River Project accepted to study the effects of urban heat islands on cloudiness around the Sun Corridor. |
| 15 May 2025 | Juliana is giving an oral presentation at the Colombia Congress and International Conference on Air Quality, Climate Change, and Public Health (CASAP). |
| 1 May 2025 | Gracee and Hannah shared their work on design of INP filter samplers and their research on dust control technologies in completion of CHEE 392 this semester. |
| 26 March 2025 | Thabo won 2nd Place in the Poster Presentation Category for the HAS Department’s El Dia Research Symposium. |
| 10 February 2025 | Congratulations to Edgardo on receiving 1st Place in the Oral Presentation Category of student awards for the AMS Symposium on Cloud Physics! |
| 13 January 2025 | Edgardo and Sylvia are in New Orleans to present at the AMS Annual Meeting. |
| 9 December 2024 | Juliana and Thabo are in Washington D.C. to present at the AGU Annual Meeting. |
| 19 November 2024 | Our NASA IIP project received some additional press from the UA College of Engineering news here! |