Wisconsin Discovery Portal

Researcher's Profile

Last Name

Bennartz 

First Name

Ralf 

Middle Initial

 

Areas of Research Expertise

* The role of water vapor, clouds, and their precipitation in the climate system with a main emphasis on their link to radiation processes
* Seeks to understand the basic principles of electromagnetic radiation and its interaction with the system earth-atmosphere
* Seeks to gain detailed insight in the particular datasets and instruments that are available and exploit those datasets in conjunction with models that allow to quantify processes and feedbacks in the climate system

Web site

University Web Page for Ralf Bennartz 

Curriculum Vitae (CV)

 

Current/Active Funding

  • NASA, 2008-2011, Global Assessment of Stratiform Boundary Layer Clouds from Aqua: Reducing Uncertainties in the Magnitude of the First Indirect Aerosol Effect

Issued Patent(s)

 

USPTO Published Applications

Recent Publication(s)

  • "An extended observation operator in HIRLAM 4D-VAR for the assimilation of cloud-affected satellite radiances"

Stengel M, Lindskog M, Unden P, Gustafsson N, Bennartz R, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 136(649): 1064-1074 Apr 2010.  Results highlight the capability of this observation operator in the HIRLAM assimilation system and encourage its application for the extended usage of cloudy satellite observations in numerical weather prediction. 

  • "Utilizing spaceborne radars to retrieve dry snowfall"

Kulie MS, Bennartz R, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 48 (12): 2564-2580 Dec 2009. A dataset consisting of one year of CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) near-surface radar reflectivity Z associated with dry snowfall is examined in this study.

  • "Assimilation of SEVIRI infared radiances with HIRLAM 4D-Var"

Stengel M, Unden P, Lindskog M, et al., Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 135 (645) Special Issue B 2100-2109 Oct 2009. Four-dimensional variational data assimilation (4D-Var) systems are ideally suited to obtain the best possible initial model state by utilizing information about the dynamical evolution of the. atmospheric state from observations, such as satellite measurements, distributed over a certain period of time. In recent years, 4D-Var systems have been developed for several global and limited-area models. At the same time, spatially and temporally highly resolved satellite observations, as for example performed by the Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) on board the Meteosat Second Generation satellites, have become available

  • "Simulating marine boundary layer clouds over the eastern Pacific in a regional climate model with double-moment cloud microphysics"

Lauer A, Wang YQ, Phillips VTJ, et al., Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres 114 article #D21205 Nov 2009. A double-moment cloud microphysics scheme with a prognostic treatment of aerosols inside clouds has been implemented into the International Pacific Research Center Regional Atmospheric Model (iRAM) to simulate marine boundary layer clouds over the eastern Pacific and to study aerosol-cloud interactions, including the aerosol indirect effect. This paper describes the new model system and presents a comparison of model results with observations.

  • "Heavy pollution suppresses light rain in China: observations and modeling"

Qian Y, Gong DY, Fan JW, et al., Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres 114: article #D00K02 Aug 2009. The causes of decrease in light rain in Eastern China are examined and determined to be pollution related.

Recent Artistic Works

 

Collaboration

 

Research Tools

 

Research Facilities

 

E-mail Address

bennartz@aos.wisc.edu 

Phone Number

(608) 265-2249 

Current University

UW - Madison 

Department

Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences 

Title

Associate Professor 

Other Appointments

 

Address Line 1

1331 Atmospheric Oceanic & Space Sciences Building 

Address Line 2

1225 West Dayton Street 

City

Madison 

State

WI 

Zip Code

53706 

Bachelor's Degree

 

Master's Degree

 

PhD

PhD, Free University of Berlin, 1997

Other Degrees

 

Technologies Available for Licensing

Attachments
Created at 6/12/2007 2:07 PM  by Mindy Dawson 
Last modified at 7/22/2010 4:11 PM  by EXTWEB\alarson