讲座简介：

Precipitation, particularly from convective storms, plays a critical role in the global water and energy cycles, yet remains a major source of uncertainty in climate projections. This talk presents research on convective precipitation across scales, starting with high-resolution modeling and satellite-based analysis of precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau, where complex orography strongly modulates regional precipitation patterns. Building on this, I investigate how microphysical processes and storm dynamics influence precipitation efficiency (PE)—the fraction of condensate that becomes surface precipitation. Using idealized WRF simulations, I assess PE sensitivity across the convective gray zone and introduce two new methods to estimate PE from standard model output. These approaches are applied to long-term, kilometer-scale climate simulations over CONUS to explore future changes by storm type. Together, these studies offer new insights into how changes in storm characteristics and convective precipitation and precipitation efficiency may shape regional precipitation responses in a warmer climate, with implications for modeling and prediction.

主讲人简介：

Julia Kukulies is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow within the Advanced Study Program at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research, where her research focuses on precipitation physics, kilometer-scale modeling, and convective extremes in a changing climate. Julia earned her PhD at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden under the supervision of Deliang Chen, studying precipitation over the Tibetan Plateau using high-resolution models and satellite observations. Julia’s long-term research vision is to improve the modeling, prediction, and understanding of precipitation and its impact on Earth system predictability, with implications for both climate projections and weather forecasting. Julia is particularly motivated to address the challenges that a warming climate poses for water resources and extreme weather, aiming to design research that informs how we build resilient future societies. Through international collaborations, including a formative research stay at Nanjing University in 2018, Julia has come to value the global research community’s role in addressing climate-related risks.