[News and Views] Can air pollution invigorate Cumulus clouds?

Wednesday 1 Apr 2026, 15:15 → 16:00 Europe/Stockholm

Albano 3: 6228 - Mega (22 seats) (Albano Building 3)

Water vapor in the air needs a surface to condense onto to form cloud droplets. Aerosols provide these surfaces, causing polluted clouds to contain more droplets. This, in turn, affects other physical processes in the cloud. A hypothesis called "convective invigoration" posits that by providing more particles for condensation, aerosols create smaller, more numerous droplets, delaying rain and releasing additional latent heat at higher altitudes, which increases convective updraft speeds. In this session of News and Views, Casey Wall, Assistant professor at MISU, will present a theory which predicts convective invigoration from basic physics.