ALIC²E Research Topics

We perform and inter-compare climate model experiments to better understand how the Earth system responds to perturbations under modern conditions, and in warmer worlds of the past and the future. A focus is the influence of changes in atmospheric composition and irradiance on the radiative forcing and the associated climate responses, e.g., responses of the atmosphere-ocean circulation. We further assess the role of circulation for extreme weather, e.g., sea-surface temperature effects on heat waves and synoptic weather influences on extremes in power production from renewables in Europe. Another example is our research on quantifying model differences in aerosols and rain, and contributing to understand model differences in the aerosol radiative forcing from experiments like used in assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Natural dust aerosols contribute most to the aerosol mass on Earth, but both weather forecasts and climate models have considerable differences in simulating dust storms. We contribute to a better understanding of the dust storm dynamics, their climatology and trends. Specifically, we compile benchmark climatologies for different dust-emitting processes, e.g., nocturnal low-level jets, mobile cyclones and the post-frontal strengthening of trade winds. Such benchmarks are helpful for evaluating weather and climate models at a process level. We also perform kilometre-scale experiments for dust outbreaks, collect land- and ship-based measurements with our atmospheric observatory, apply machine learning techniques to satellite images, and develop own automated detection algorithms for process-based assessments in data. These methods allow us to gain insights into storm dynamics from the meso- to the synoptic scale and to quantify dust effects on weather, climate and impacts on photovoltaic power production.