Michael Diamond

separated

Clouds, Aerosol, & Climate

Affiliation

CIRES

Michael is interested in how the interactions between small particles suspended in the atmosphere, called aerosols, and clouds affect Earth’s climate. In particular, he has been studying “natural experiments” in which aerosol effects on clouds can be distinguished from other factors, like changes in weather. A particularly good example of this occurs in the southeast Atlantic Ocean, where clouds observed within a heavily-trafficked shipping corridor are brighter and have a larger number of smaller cloud droplets compared to clouds occurring just outside the corridor. At CSL, Michael will explore how the cloud response to shipping aerosol perturbations differs under different meteorological conditions using satellite observations, machine learning and other statistical methods, and numerical modeling at cloud-resolving and regional climate scales.

Education

2020: Ph.D., Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle
2015: B.A., Earth & Environmental Sciences, Vanderbilt University

Research

Aerosol-cloud interactions, remote sensing and airborne observations of aerosol and cloud properties, cloud feedbacks, clouds and precipitation

last modified: December 20, 2022