AOSC Seminar by Dr. Brent McBride, 10/02/2025
AOSC Seminar
Brent McBride
NASA GSFC/UMBC
Title
When will a cloud rain?
Abstract
Predicting rain, a major driver of social and economic change, is a classic challenge. While we can detect rain after it starts, forecasting its onset globally requires tracking how and where droplets grow.
The Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP2) on NASA’s Plankton Aerosol Cloud ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission is changing the way we think about cloud development. HARP2 is sensitive to the polarized cloudbow, a signal unique to liquid water clouds that encodes the complete cloud droplet size distribution (DSD) at cloud top. The two shape parameters of the DSD, the droplet effective radius and variance, are a direct link between cloud microphysics and radiation, and therefore, critical to understanding the role clouds play in our climate.
In this talk, we’ll discuss the PACE mission, the HARP2 instrument, and explore how we use HARP2 polarized observations of clouds to catch the drizzle mode of the DSD as it forms. This marks the initiation of collision-coalescence, the first step towards precipitation. Finally, we'll bring HARP2 intuition together with heritage and new sensors, such as EarthCARE’s Cloud Profiling Radar, the 3MI polarimeter, and PACE’s own Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), to clarify the cloud impact on climate.
Bio
Dr. Brent McBride is a research assistant professor at the Earth and Space Institute (ESI) at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in Baltimore, MD. He has over 10 years of experience developing Earth-observing small satellites, their on-orbit operations, and aerosol, cloud, and ocean science from their datasets. Dr. McBride currently serves as the instrument scientist for the Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP2) on NASA’s Plankton Aerosol Cloud ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission.
Contact
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AOSC Seminar
Pre-seminar refreshment: N/A
Seminar: 3:30-4:30pm, Room: ATL 2400(only when in-person)
Meet-the-Speaker: 4:30-5:00pm, Room: ATL 3400(only when in-person) [For AOSC Students only]
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