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Our long awaited publication exploring the Descending Cirrus clouds over Gadanki. Int'l. Journal of Remote Sensing It is the story of Cirrus clouds which descends / ascends altitude ..... their characteristic properties ....using NARL's long term Lidar data. Nellore Manoj Kumar, Kannan Venkatramanan, Anish Kumar M. Nair & Shekatam Satheesh Kumar   (2020)   On the characterization of descending nature of cirrus clouds over a tropical site, Gadanki,   International Journal of Remote Sensing,   41:17,   6550-6569,   DOI:  10.1080/01431161.2020.1742942 https://t.co/vpReYZZZsY https://t.co/3zJDq2KNjM https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01431161.2020.1742942 The interesting feature of Cirrus cloud's descending & ascending are well characterized using ~6 years of lidar observations. The study roots back to the inspiration from my earlier work published in J.Geophysicsl Research in 2012 Nair,  A. K. M.   ,  K....

Our paper published in the Atmospheric Science Letters on different types of clouds during monsoon phases. The study was mainly carried out using Ka-band doppler weather radar of IITM. https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/asl.847 Chakravarty, K., Pokhrel, S., Kalshetti, M., Nair, A. K. M., Kalapureddy, M. C. R., Deshpande, S. M., … Goswami, B. N. (2018). Unraveling of cloud types during phases of monsoon intra-seasonal oscillations by a Ka-band Doppler weather radar. Atmospheric Science Letters , 19 (9), e847. http://doi.org/10.1002/asl.847 https://doi.org/10.1002/asl.847

Our article "Enhanced daytime occurrence of clouds in the tropical upper troposphere over land and ocean" published in Atmospheric Research  Gupta, A. K., Rajeev, K., Sijikumar, S., & Nair, A. K. M. (2018). Enhanced daytime occurrence of clouds in the tropical upper troposphere over land and ocean. Atmospheric Research , 201 (October 2017), 133–143. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2017.10.018 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169809517302235

Climate model projections that show a greater rise in global temperature are likely to prove more accurate than those showing a lesser rise. The study was published in the journal - Science. National Center for Atmospheric Research scientists John Fasullo and Kevin Trenberth analyzed how well 16 leading sophisticated climate models reproduce observed relative humidity in Earth's tropics and subtropics. They used observations from two NASA satellite instruments - the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft and the Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) . Climate model projections showing a greater rise in global temperature are likely to prove more accurate than those showing a lesser rise, according to them. Read in detail:  https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/8264/future-warming-likely-be-high-side-climate-projections-analysis-finds http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20121108.html

Have you heard of Cirrus cloud descending .........? What is it ......? Is it a frequent phenomenon .....? Does it have seasonal dependence ....? Where does it occur ......? Why do cirrus descend .....? What is it's impact .......? We have discovered the phenomenon using 3 years of lidar observations over Thiruvananthapuram, near southern tip of India that Cirrus clouds frequently DESCEND.....! After analysing the data together with other observations and models, we have come up answers to the above questions.  The observations and results are now accepted by the scientific community and it finds a place in the Journal of Geophysical Research - JGR (Atmosphere). Read more... Here is the link:  http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2011JD017406.shtml   Nair, A. K. M. , K. Rajeev, M. K. Mishra, B. V. Thampi, and K. Parameswaran  ( 2012 ),  Multiyear lidar observations of the descending nature of tropical cirrus clouds ,...

Have a look at these images, captured 2 hrs apart by MODIS of TERRA & AQUA. We can clearly decipher the transition of contrail to contrail cirrus clouds....... Increasing air pollution by planes is definitely pointing towards increase the in Longwave radiative forcing and thereby increasing the global warming potential.... Read more:  http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=78154 Image credit:  Jeff Schmaltz,  LANCE MODIS Rapid Response Team,  Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Adam Voiland., NASA earth observatory

There are many proposals to reduce the climatic impact and change because of the Global Warming. Some of them tries to address the causative mechanism while some treats symptoms..... Geo-Engineering is d eliberate large-scale engineering and manipulation of the planetary environment to combat or counteract man made changes in atmosphere. Have a look at the three proposals to reduce increasing temperature. Click on the image of use the link below for a recent article in BBC. More details:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8338853.stm

The bottom 2 images are zoomed portion from 1st image. These contrails exhibit a phenomenon known as Crow Instability. Vortices that form within contrails have been observed to occasionally interact with each other.... U can read detailed report here. http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2011/08/crow-instability-in-contrails.html