Volatile Organic Compounds affect cloud brightness.
A new study has shown that natural emissions and manmade pollutants can have an unexpected cooling effect on the world’s climate by making clouds brighter.
Work by NCAS scientist David Topping and colleagues from the University of Manchester has identified that VOC's (Volatile Organic Compounds) act differently to other atmospheric chemicals. Under cooler moist conditions where clouds form the molecules prefer to be liquid. These larger molecules are more effective seeds for cloud droplets making the clouds appear brighter.
Colin McKinnon - NERC Director of Innovation & Communications
In April, Colin McKinnon the NERC Director, Innovation & Communications visited the NCAS Headquarters and met with members of the operational team in Leeds. Colin has responsibility for NERC's innovation strategy, ensuring that NERC-funded science has an impact on business, policy and wider public life and for ensuring these successes are communicated effectively.
All NCAS staff will have the chance to meet Colin and discover more about his role within NERC as he will be attending and presenting at the NCAS staff meeting in Birmingham in July.
Visiting Scientist Programme - first grant awarded
The brand new NCAS Visiting Scientist Programme has awarded its first grant to Dr Cindy Bryuere from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado. The successful proposal facilitates a visit to the University of Leeds to collaborate with Dr Alan Gadian. Dr Bryuere's visit will enable a joint research project between NCAS weather and National Earth Systems Laboratory to examine weather processes over the past 3 decades and over this century.
This collaboration is part of a larger US project, the Nested Regional Climate Model (NRCM). Led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the NRCM aims to embed very high resolution simulations, resolving all significant weather scales, within a global climate simulation.
