Skip to content
 

CIRA Fellow

Steve Ackerman

Director, Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies

stevea@ssec.wisc.edu


Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere
Colorado State University
1375 Campus Delivery
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1375

Research Interests: 

Globally, the earth-atmosphere system is balanced by the radiative energy gained from the sun and lost through infrared emission. The geographic distribution of radiative energy is an important climate variable. A change in one climate variable inevitably results in a change in another variable. Thus, a shift in the radiation balance at the surface of the earth, top of the atmosphere or within the atmosphere can result in a sequence of complicated changes in global climate. My interests center on understanding how changes in the radiation balance affect and are affected by changes in other climate variables such as clouds, aerosols, water vapor and surface properties. These feedback mechanisms are studied using a compliment of theoretical models and observations.