Biography:
Prof. Hannele Korhonen is a Research Professor at the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI).
She was appointed as a Research Professor in Climate Modelling in 2014, and acts as the Director of the Climate Research Program at FMI since 2018.
She has nearly two decades of experience in research on atmospheric aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions from process to global scales.
Her other current research interests include artificial cloud modification, and advanced statistical methods to enhance performance with complicated atmospheric models.
Professor Korhonen gained her PhD from the University of Helsinki in 2004 and has since worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Universities of Leeds (UK) and Kuopio (Finland). .
Project Brief:
"Optimization of Aerosol Seeding In rain enhancement Strategies (OASIS)”
OASIS applies a multidisciplinary approach to provide a comprehensive quantification of the role of atmospheric aerosols in precipitation enhancement.
It aims to both advance the fundamental scientific understanding and to provide practical guidance for future field explorations.
The project goals have been addressed through a 1-year field campaign on aerosols and their cloud-precipitation interactions in the UAE, combined with simulations using a cloud-resolving model with highly advanced aerosol microphysics as well as quantum chemical calculations, along with innovative statistical approaches.
This research project is being carried out by the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the University of Helsinki and Tampere University of Technology.
Research Progress:
Professor Korhonen’s progress in her project to date has seen suitable ground and satellite-based datasets being developed and selected for the field measurement campaign.
In the modelling strand, several case studies of precipitating clouds have been identified for further analysis, and simulated through meteorological models and cloud-scale models.
One year of field measurements will be completed in February 2019.
Once this stage of the project has been completed, the full data set will be analyzed to characterize the background aerosols, clouds and boundary layer behavior.
Cloud-scale modelling will proceed with simulations of seeding.
Results from the modelling of silver iodide ice nucleation will be parameterized for a cloud-scale model. A set of training simulations from the cloud-scale model will be used to build a statistical emulator, which will then be used to explore the possibility of utilizing this technique to build an operational tool for predicting optimal conditions for cloud seeding.
Roadmap:
All the main activities within OASIS are progressing well and on schedule. Since the field campaign became operational in February 2018, most of the instrumentation has been run continuously at the site since. The initial data drawn from these Tasks have been delivered as an input for the modelling tasks. These results have also been made available to the other UAEREP concurrent projects.
Regarding modelling activities, the aim is to move gradually towards more complex environmental situations and to start simulating seed aerosol injections within the model. The mesoscale meteorological simulations have been completed on schedule and input fields for two representative cases have been provided. The two selected cases are a moderate forced convective case near mountains in summer and a stratiform frontal cloud field passing over the UAE in winter.
The performance of the model in a cloud seeding situation has been evaluated against a well characterized case study of seeding of a precipitating marine stratiform cloud. This evaluation revealed that the model can capture the seeding effect in a realistic manner.
For more information on the project please visit : https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/oasis-project
