Climate Models & Radiative Forcing
In 1996, the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report that underscored how aerosols and clouds impact radiative fluxes and modulate climate. Their first report and all subsequent reports every seven years have emphasized how the level of scientific understanding (LOSU) remains low. This major gap in our understanding of how aerosols and clouds alter climate continues to drive the need for more widespread and accurate measurements, especially of black carbon (BC) aerosols that contribute to climate warming and clouds that cool the climate.
Discoveries that matter
The source and types of aerosols that form clouds remains a major puzzle. The Droplet CCN 100/200 and SPIN instruments provide answers to this puzzle by measuring cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) that become water droplets and ice nuclei (IN) that become ice crystals. Using Droplet’s SP2 and PAX instruments, climate scientists can study light absorbing BC that seriously warms the climate. And our BCP instrument enables Airbus A-330/340 commercial airliners to measure the impact of cirrus clouds on climate. Finally, every one of Droplet’s cloud spectrometers measure cloud properties that are critical to validating and tuning climate models.
"Given the critical importance of aerosols and clouds in modulating climate change, and the large uncertainties that still confound our understanding of the complexities of such climate interactions, Droplet aerosol and cloud instrumentation continue to be at the forefront of observational science investigating this escalating problem"
-– Dr. Martin Gallagher, Professor and researcher, School of Natural Sciences, Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, United KingdomFeatured Product
SP2 Single Particle Soot Photometer
Droplet’s premier instrument for direct measurement of black carbon in individual aerosol particles, delivering unmatched detail about black carbon particles.
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Properties of small cirrus ice crystals from commercial aircraft measurements and implications for flight operations
Measurements of cloud ice crystal size distributions made by a backscatter cloud probe (BCP) mounted on five commercial airliners...
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Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report
The Synthesis Report (SYR) distils and integrates the findings of the three Working Group contributions to the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most comprehensive assessment of climate change undertaken thus far by the IPCC.
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