Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My friend and I are doing a project on the breakup of stratocumulus cloud decks due to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. To test our project, we need to make stratocumuli in a test chamber. How do we regulate the conditions so that the clouds we get model the properties of stratocumuli specifically, rather than just a regular cloud?

Hi IsaKay,

This topic is definitely outside of my expertise. But a brief online search turned up a couple of articles describing work with laboratory cloud simulations:

https://www.pnas.org/content/108/39/16164

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... louds_tops

These test chambers appear to be very sophisticated and I don't know if a simpler version might be capable of the experiment you want to conduct. For example, a very simple cloud chamber is described here:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... own-cloud/

You might want to research the atmospheric conditions associated with stratocumulus clouds. You may find that it's possible to mimic those in a simple cloud chamber.

I hope this helps. Please ask again if you have more questions.

A. Norman