	Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology National Center for Atmospheric Research

CLOUDS IN CLIMATE PROGRAM (CCP)

The NCAR Clouds in Climate Program (CCP) is in its development stage. Work is presently focused on tropical convection because (1) it is widely recognized as an important process in climate models; (2) there is critical mass and range of expertise at NCAR to address the problem. It is likely that as CCP matures it will encompass other aspects of clouds-in-climate research. The research being undertaken under the auspices of CCP is already making key contributions to international programs such as the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere (TOGA) Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE) and the Global Energy and Water-cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Cloud System Study (GCSS). The cloud-system work is being extended to larger scales and is making contributions to the Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Program.

The CCP strengthens already established collaborations with research groups at home and abroad, as well as catalyzing new interactions founded on theory, modeling and observational aspects of precipitating cloud systems. CCP thus links research activities undertaken, for example, in the Cloud Systems Group (CSG) in the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology (MMM) Division of NCAR, and strategic endeavors (see Fig. 1). In keeping with an interdivisional research effort, CCP is under the joint leadership of Mitchell Moncrieff (MMM) and Jim Mack (CGD) .

The emphasis here is on MMM/CSG contributions for the simple reason that CGD has only recently become involved in the research effort; for example, in projects that make use of cloud-system modeling results in convective parameterization and the interaction between clouds and radiation. For a selected list of papers on cloud systems by CCP scientists, click here.

Figure 1

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