NEWS
NORMAN, Okla. – Greg McFarquhar, director of the Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research (CIWRO) and Operations and a researcher at the University of Oklahoma, has been awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to compile and analyze cloud property measurements from around the world. As part of this effort, his team is creating an online database that will provide standardized, comprehensive findings to the public and help inform future cloud research strategies.
Weather and climate models utilize cloud property information, which vary based on external factors such as temperature, altitude and geographic location. Researchers gather this information using expensive, weekslong projects with aircraft. However, the data may be collected using different tools and techniques worldwide, which can produce slightly different results even for measuring the same cloud. Project findings uploaded online also are not centralized to one location and can be difficult for other researchers to obtain.
McFarquhar, who is also the George Lynn Cross Research Professor in the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences’ School of Meteorology, noted that these measurements are important for scientists to gain a clearer understanding of how clouds work.
“We need more knowledge of the processes that are occurring in clouds and how that impacts weather, such as things like quantitative precipitation forecasts or evolution of systems,” McFarquhar said. “How do the feedbacks of clouds with radiation and aerosols impact predictions of precipitation, storm intensity and so on?”
His research team is gathering findings from field projects that have examined vertical cloud profiles over the past three decades, spanning regions such as the Arctic, the tropics, the mid-latitudes and the Southern Ocean. They aim to standardize the collected data, which will help them to determine how optical array probes – whose calibration and processing algorithms can vary – affect cloud measurements. The team will also develop uncertainty estimates to provide more consistent measurements across all projects.
“If I'm comparing my data that I collected in Oklahoma to, say, data collected in France,” McFarquhar said, “and if I see a difference in geographic location, I want to know: ‘Is that caused by the fact that the clouds over Oklahoma are actually different than those over France? Or is that because they use different probes and process their data differently?’”
McFarquhar’s team is among more than two dozen groups – four of which are led by OU researchers – to earn funding through the DoD’s Defense Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DEPSCoR) 2024 Research Collaboration competition. DEPSCoR aims to strengthen higher education research infrastructure in underutilized U.S. states and territories. Through the competition, projects are awarded in areas associated with DoD initiatives.
McFarquhar said the data collection and analysis will not only lead to a publicly accessible and updatable database but will also strengthen understanding of how environmental conditions impact cloud properties. Using artificial intelligence, the researchers will uncover which environmental conditions have the most pronounced effects. They will then use that information to see how well existing models and remote sensing retrievals currently represent those effects.
Additionally, the team’s work will help determine where to conduct future research to eliminate information gaps. “It costs a lot of money to collect these data,” McFarquhar said. “We want to make sure we’re getting full use out of the existing data. I'm also quite sure that there are places in the world we do not have the data we need.”
The magnitude of McFarquhar’s project is a novel opportunity for him, and its outcomes will benefit atmospheric scientists interested in having an easily accessible database of findings. That includes researchers who work at the University of Oklahoma and the various entities within the National Weather Center.
He added that the research his team is conducting also has military applications. “Knowledge of cloud properties can be critical for Navy and Marine Corps operations on and near the sea, where clouds affect visibility,” McFarquhar said. “This improved knowledge can also help evaluate models used for forecasting three-dimensional visibility, which has been a difficult scientific and operational problem.”
About the research
“Use of a Common Framework to Process and Analyze Vertical Profiles of Cloud Microphysical Properties In a Variety of Meteorological, Surface and Aerosol Conditions” is funded by a $599,938 grant from the Department of Defense, Award No. FA95502510368. It began in Sept. 2025 and is expected to end in Sept. 2028.
About the University of Oklahoma
Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. As the state’s flagship university, OU serves the educational, cultural, economic and health care needs of the state, region and nation. For more information about the university, visit www.ou.edu.
New research from the University of Oklahoma has found that supplementing pregnant and lactating mice with a naturally occurring compound produced by healthy gut bacteria significantly lowered rates of fatty liver disease in their offspring as they aged.
Greg McFarquhar, director of the Cooperative Institute for Severe and High-Impact Weather Research (CIWRO) and Operations and a researcher at the University of Oklahoma, has been awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to compile and analyze cloud property measurements from around the world.
The University of Oklahoma professor Christina Giacona is making her fourth trip to the Grammy Awards next month, as four albums she worked on have received nominations from the Recording Academy.
