Dust aerosol is one of the most dominant aerosol species by mass and is ubiquitous globally due to the intercontinental transport of its plume.  Airborne dust plumes affect the radiation fields directly through scattering, absorption, and emission of radiation. The optical properties of dust aerosols vary substantially with their particle sizes, shapes, and mineralogical compositions, as suggested by rigorous electromagnetic theory and confirmed by laboratory measurements.  These variations in dust optical properties lead to significant uncertainty in the estimation of the dust direct radiative effect (DDRE).

In this project, we will use the EMIT mineralogical dataset and spaceborne lidar remote sensing to quantify DDRE over Saharan desert regions, by taking into account mineral dust particle sizes, shapes, and mineralogical compositions. 

Orographic wave clouds are terrain-induced mixed-phase clouds (MPC) that can occur in mountain regions. A critical yet poorly understood key process in MPCs is the cloud glaciation process, which transforms MPCs into ice clouds. As the orographic wave clouds often exhibit a liquid-ice layered structure at fine scales under a relatively simple dynamics condition, these clouds can be an optimal testbed to investigate the cloud glaciation process. 

The Aerial Tracking of Temporal Evolution of Mixed-Phase Cloud in Mountain Terrain 2026 (ATTEMPT-26) field campaign is a UW startup-sponsored field campaign and will measure the fine-scale structures of the microphysical and dynamic properties of orographic wave clouds to address the overarching hypothesis of “Fine-scale spatial heterogeneity of MPCs microphysical properties critically determines the effectiveness of the WBF process and therefore cloud glaciation.” The ATTEMPT field campaign is scheduled for February 2026.