GCSS WG3 - Critical Needed Actions

Our layer cloud group needs to develop some areas of its program in order to reach our overall objectives. In this Section, it is hoped that ideas for pursuing some critical issues will be developed.

Some of the critical issues that are not being adequately pursued include:

• turbulent mixing within extra-tropical layer clouds
• techniques to use large scale forcing to properly initiate small scale microphysical processes
• specific cases from Asia or Africa
• techniques to merge cloud profiling radars with other datasets to develop 3D depictions of layering
• moistening of the troposphere through the actions of layer cloud systems
• quantifying the capabilities of GCMs to simulate the impacts of layer cloud systems