Flor Vanessa Maciel
Description: The Aerosol-Climate Interactions research group at UCLA's Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department is dedicated to unraveling the complex interactions between aerosols (tiny airborne particles) and Earth's climate. This research is critical for two key reasons. First, aerosol impacts on climate is one of the major uncertainties in our understanding of historical and future climate changes. Gaining a deeper understanding of…
The central focus of the Aerosol-Climate Interactions research group in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department at UCLA is to understand and quantify interactions between suspended aerosols (particles suspended in the atmosphere) and the climate system. This research is critical for at least two reasons. First, the climate impact of aerosols constitutes one of the main uncertainties in our understanding of both past and future climate changes. So a better understanding of aerosol effects on cli
Within the broad field of aerosol-climate interactions, most of our group’s work focuses on desert dust aerosols, which are the constituent particles of dust storms , and account for about two thirds of atmospheric aerosol mass . The Aerosol-Climate Interactions group is interested in answering fundamental questions like: Does dust warm or cool the climate, and by how much? By how much has dust increased since pre-industrial times? Has this increase in dust enhanced or opposed anthropogenic climate change,
In order to answer these fundamental questions of the effects of dust and other aerosols on the climate system, our group uses a number of tools, which include developing and using “simple” first-principles numerical models that run on desktop computers, large-scale climate models that require supercomputers, and careful analysis of in situ, satellite, and climate model data. Our group’s research is discussed in more detail here .
Flor Vanessa Maciel