Modeling Clouds

From NASA's Earth Observatory:

Yi-Chun Chen has spent years studying the low clouds that linger over Earth’s ocean but has never been out to sea. As a postdoctoral scholar at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Chen writes computer programs to simulate cloud formation, then runs them and compares the results to satellite measurements. Chen is a numerical modeler, a scientist who uses a series of equations to study the natural world. Chen’s latest paper, published in the journal Nature Geosciences, suggests that precipitation, temperature and humidity all have a say in how clouds respond to very tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols. The better she understands these micro-level processes, the more she can help scientists trying to model larger systems, including our planet and its future. The image below was acquired by one of the northward-viewing cameras of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's polar-orbiting Terra spacecraft.