Congratulations to Dr. Jiwen Fan, an atmospheric scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. She is the lead author of the most-read paper from the past 12 months on the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences website.

Her paper, “Review of Aerosol-Cloud Interactions: Mechanisms, Significance, and Challenges,” funded by the Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program, has been accessed 1,390 times since being published online in October 2016. Fan co-wrote the paper with Yuan Wang, California Institute of Technology, Daniel Rosenfeld, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Xiaohong Liu, University of Wyoming. They discussed how aerosols interact with different kinds of clouds and influence precipitation and energy balance on regional and global scales. The authors also explored ways to overcome modeling and observational obstacles in studying aerosol-cloud interactions.

Fan is a recognized expert in the field of aerosol-cloud interaction who has made significant contributions to provide a better understanding of the complex processes associated with aerosol interactions with convection and cloud microphysics. The Regional and Global Climate Modeling program has supported Fan for eight years, including her research on improving model representations of aerosol-cloud interactions using global cloud data and dust effects on California winter storms. She is also the co-principal investigator for the Climate Modeling Development and Validation – Mesoscale Convective System project.