Prof M Gallagher, Dr P Connolly, Dr G Lloyd
No more applications being accepted
Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)
About the Project
Clouds are key to the radiation balance of the Earth and their development, regional coverage, frequency and their microphysical makeup (ice and water) is important to understand feedbacks in climate. Whilst there are many satellite derived and ground based data sets of cloud cover there are inconsistencies due to artefacts in satellite data that have lead to spurious trends in long-term observations (Petzold et al. 2017 and Beswick et al. 2015) with more recent work showing that data sets from different satellites showed variability comparable in magnitude to inter-annual variability. Part of this problem is due to differences in sampling. Over China changes in cloud cover have been tentatively linked to increasing trends in anthropogenic emissions in aerosols (Bennartz et al. 2011). However there is significant ambiguity in these data sets and hence low confidence in our knowledge of the inter-annual and seasonal trends in cloud cover and how these may be linked to aerosol concentrations. As described by the IPCC Science Assessment Report (Hartmann et al. 2013) “while trends of cloud cover are consistent between independent data sets in certain regions, substantial ambiguity and therefore low confidence remains in the observations of global-scale cloud variability and trends.” This project will contribute to improving our knowledge of cirrus and other cloud properties in an important region of the globe, the Asia-Pacific region.
Funding Notes
This project is one of a number that are in competition for funding from the NERC EAO DTP. Studentships will provide a stipend (currently £14,553 pa), training support fee and UK/EU tuition fees for 3.5 years.
All studentships are available to applicants who have been resident in the UK for 3 years or more and are eligible for home fee rates. Some studentships may be available to UK/EU nationals residing in the EU but outside the UK. Applicants with an International fee status are not eligible for funding.
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