A team of scientists led by Kuo-Nan Liou and Yu Gu in UCLA’s Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering (JIFRESSE) has been awarded a three-year, $2.1 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Program Office to improve climate models. The grant supports the researchers’ efforts to better incorporate how mountains, vegetation, such as forests, and snow impurities like dust and black carbon affect the amount of energy the Earth’s surface absorbs from the sun. With this new approach, they can gain a deeper understanding of the fundamental interactions between the atmosphere and the land to then, develop better climate models.

This news has also been reported by UCLA Newsroom:  http://newsroom.ucla.edu/dept/faculty/ucla-led-research-team-receives-grant-to-improve-climate-models