Observed Large-scale Controls on Marine Cloud-topped Boundary Layers and How Wayne Schubert Influenced the Science

Wayne Schubert’s 1979 Journal of Atmospheric Science papers on the physics of the marine cloud-topped boundary layers provided a solid foundation that helped guide the search in observations for how marine low clouds vary with the large-scale environment that forms them. In this talk, I will provide a brief overview of these observational studies that focus on interpreting the observed climate variability in marine low clouds as a result of changes in “cloud-controlling factors” in the large-scale environment. I will also provide a brief overview of how these studies are being used to understand how marine low clouds will respond to climate change. This work is performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.