Sunday night’s tornado warning in Pickens County was a reminder that bad weather can occur almost any time in Alabama. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy are conducting research into how forests may influence the development of severe weather. The D-O-E has set up an observatory in the Bankhead National Forest southwest of Huntsville to gather data. Researcher Chongai Kuang says forests generate oxygen and other gases that can influence cloud cover…
“We're so we're definitely interested in not just gaseous compounds, but also water vapor that comes off the forest right as the forest breeds throughout the phenological seasons, and how this water vapor itself can act to help trigger cloud formation or helps through the development of convection:” he said.
A release from the Argonne National Laboratory, which is participating in the Alabama says for at least five years, the observatory will provide data for scientists to investigate the complex interactions among clouds, vegetation and aerosols suspended in the atmosphere. By exploring critical feedback between these areas, the observatory will contribute valuable insights into aerosol-cloud interactions. The data collected will also advance weather and climate models for a more comprehensive understanding of Earth’s atmospheric dynamics. The research includes the building of a tower to gather data from different heights. Chongai Kuang says the point is to measure which elements impact weather and which don’t.
“There are a lot of controls on severe weather, and they can be large scale controls that impact a large region, or they can potentially even be small controls, like what comes off of the forest. And so part of our goal is to really disentangle those,” he said.
The Mobile weather observatory was moved to Alabama after eight years of data collection in Oliktok Point, Alaska. Along with the science tower, researchers will also send up ballons to gather data on cloud cover and how that might be influenced by gases from the Bankhead National Forest.
