Advancing Modeling and Remote Sensing of Clouds, Aerosols and Land Surface Radiative Effects and Their Impacts on Climate: Prof. Liou’s Lifetime Achievements

Clouds, aerosols, snow and complex mountain ranges are among the most fundamental and challenging components that determine the earth’s radiative energy budget and feedbacks in a changing climate. During his distinguished career of more than four decades, Prof. Liou was an important force in advancing the frontier of modeling and remote sensing of the radiative energy in earth-atmospheric system, especially related to ice clouds, aerosols, snow, snow and soot interaction, and three-dimensional radiative effect of mountain surfaces and their impacts on regional climate and water resources. He made profound impacts in these areas not only through his own research, but also through training a generation of outstanding researchers and his influential textbooks that opened the door for so many graduate students worldwide to our field. Finally, he created the organizational infrastructure at UCLA to formalize collaboration between academic institutions and NASA labs and broadened horizon for early career climate researchers in both institutions. In this presentation, we will highlight a few most significant works of Prof. Liou and their impacts on climate research, his colleagues, and AMS community.