Greg McFarquhar University of Illinois
Professor Greg McFarquhar Department of Atmospheric Sciences University of Illinois 105 S. Gregory Street Urbana, IL 61801-3070 PH: 217-265-5458 FX: 217-244-4393 Email: mcfarq at illinois.edu
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Picture of the Month: Check back each month for a new picture about our group's activities. This month, Dr. Junshik Um is seen working with the SPEC Inc. Cloud Particle Imager (CPI) in the cloud physics lab at the University of Manchester, England. Prof. McFarquhar and Dr. Um visited Manchester in August 2009 to check the calibration of the CPI, to compare the performance of the CPI against other CPIs in the cloud chamber at the University of Manchester, and to conduct an experiment on ice crystal aggregation in the cloud chamber.
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Greg McFarquhar received his B.Sc. in mathematics and physics from the University of Toronto, Canada in 1987. Thereafter, he changed his field of study to atmospheric sciences and received his M.Sc. (1989) and Ph.D. (1993) from the University of Toronto, specializing in cloud physics. Greg spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California (1993-94) and worked at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado (1995-2001) before joining the faculty at the University of Illinois in the fall of 2001. He is currently chair of the American Meteorological Society Committee on Cloud Physics and has active research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He has formerly served as Chair of the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program Cloud properties working group, and has been Chief Scientist for the ARM Uninhabited Aerospace Vehicle Program (ARM UAV), the ARM Aerial Vehicle Program (AVP) and the ARM Aerial Facilities (AAF). He is currently the Richard and Margaret Romano Professorial Scholar at the University of Illinois. He has more than 68 publications in the refereed literature and has made over 200 presentations at conferences and working group meetings. Interested candidates for graduate studies or postdoctoral positions are encouraged to contact him for more information.
The most fundamental and complex problems in climate and weather research today are our poor understandings of the basic properties of clouds and our inability to determine quantitatively the many effects cloud processes have on weather and climate. Estimates from current climate models indicate that Earth's average surface temperature will warm from 1.5 to 4.5oC by 2100 due to increases in greenhouse gases. Most of the very large uncertainty in this estimate is attributed to different treatments of clouds in climate models. On the weather scale, the energy produced by one day of rain within a hurricane is 200 times the worldwide electrical generating capacity, and the destructive force of hurricane precipitation causes the world's greatest natural disasters, yet we have not yet developed a quantitative understanding of the cloud processes that release this energy. Prof. McFarquhar's work at Illinois aims at making fundamental advances in our understanding of cloud properties and processes, and improving our ability to represent clouds in weather and climate models.
Greg has complimentary research programs addressing the most pressing issues in weather and climate research under the overarching theme of clouds and their relation to climate and weather. Specific research efforts are advancing our understanding of 1) how clouds affect the transmission of radiation through the atmosphere; 2) how clouds and their impacts on radiation are represented in climate models; 3) how anthropogenic aerosols impact cloud properties and hence change regional and global water and energy cycles; 4) how cloud processes affect the evolution of hurricanes and mesoscale convective systems; 5) the fundamental nature of rain formation. See examples of work in some of these areas below.
| Hurricanes | Cirrus |
Arctic Clouds |
| Liquid Clouds | Indirect Effects | Rain Formation |
Current Group
Current Graduate Students
| Student | Degree |
Topic |
| Bae, Kenny | M.S. |
Arctic cirrus clouds |
| Jackson, Robert | M.S. |
Arctic boundary layer clouds |
| Maliawco, Richard | M.S. |
Impact of dust on hurricane evolution |
| Meyers, Eric | M.S. |
Hurricane genesis & intensification |
| Pitcel, Michelle | M.S. |
Mesoscale gravity waves |
| Plummer, David | Ph.D. |
Microphysics of snowbands in mid-latitude cyclones |
| Rossenow, Andrew | M.S. |
Snowbands in mid-laatitude cyclones |
| Yang, Hee-Jung | Ph.D. |
Indirect effects in trade wind cumuli |
| Zhang, Gong | Ph.D. |
Arctic boundary layer clouds |
Current Postdocs/Staff/Associates
| Individual | Topic |
| Freer, Matt | Cloud microphysics probe data processing |
| Jewett, Brian | Hurricane and mid-latitude cyclone studies |
| Um, Junshik | Cloud/radiative interactions |
| Weingartner, Fiona | Rain studies and cloud physics history |
Former Students/Postdocs/Staff
| Student | Degree |
Year | Topic | Current Employer |
| Birky, Josh | UG |
Lidar observations of clouds | University of South Florida, Tampa, FL | |
| Dooley, Amanda | M.S. |
2008 | Hurricane cloud microphysics | University of Illinois, Urbana, IL |
| Freer, Matt | Staff |
Cloud physics probe processing | Meteo France, Toulouse, France | |
| Grim, Joe | Ph.D. |
2008 | MCS microphysics | NCAR, Boulder, CO |
| Guarente, Bryan | M.S. |
2007 | MCS modeling | NCAR, Boulder, CO |
| Hampton, Justin | M.S. |
2009 | Mid-latitude snowband properties | Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, IL |
| Kruk, Michael | M.S. |
2005 | Bow echo damage patterns | NOAA, Ashville, NC |
| Nousiainen, Timo | Postdoc | Scattering from small ice crystals | University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland | |
| Scheff, Jack | UG |
Cloud particles as fractals | University of Washington, Seattle, WA | |
| Smith, Andrea | M.S. |
2007 | Microphysics of MCSs | Longmont, CO |
| Timlin, Mike | Staff |
Cloud probe analysis | Midwestern Climate Center, Urbana, IL | |
| Um, Junshik | M.S. |
2004 | Cloud-radiation interactions | University of Illinois, Urbana, IL |
| Um, Junshik | Ph.D. |
2009 | Tropical cirrus microphysics/radiation | University of Illinois, Urbana, IL |
| Wang, Hailong | Ph.D. |
2007 | Indirect effects in trade wind cumuli | NOAA/CIRES, Boulder, CO |
| Zhang, Henian | M.S. |
2004 | Models of hurricane microphysics | Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA |
| Zhang, Henian | Ph.D. |
2008 | Saharan dust impacts on hurricanes | Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA |