Peter Blossey
· Assistant Professor of Atmospheric SciencesUniversity of Washington · Atmospheric Sciences
Active 1994–2026
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About
The faculty, staff and students in the Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science at the University of Washington are engaged in the study of a broad range of atmospheric phenomena and processes, using methods ranging from mathematical analysis to field experimentation. Research projects range in size from small studies involving individual scientists to large national and international programs involving teams of scientists. Research groups in the department are concerned with Atmospheric Chemistry, Atmospheric Dynamics, Boundary Layer Processes, Cloud and Aerosol Research, Glaciology and Planetary Atmospheres, Cloud Dynamics, Precipitation Processes, Storms, Weather Analysis and Forecasting, Climate, Global change, Airflow over mountains, and other topics. Some groups maintain special research facilities for the use of their students. In some of these activities, there is close cooperation with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Oregon State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Regional Center through the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies. Faculty members often have interests in more than one area, and research projects frequently involve questions of broad scope which do not fall neatly into a single category. This is particularly true of research projects directed toward understanding the chemical and physical modification of the environment by human activities.
Research topics
- Physics
- Environmental science
- Atmospheric sciences
- Meteorology
- Geology
- Climatology
- Oceanography
- Geography
Selected publications
Earth system science data · 2021 · 268 citations
Abstract. The science guiding the EUREC4A campaign and its measurements is presented. EUREC4A comprised roughly 5 weeks of measurements in the downstream winter trades of the North Atlantic – eastward and southeastward of Barbados. Through its ability to characterize processes operating across a wide range of scales, EUREC4A marked a turning point in our ability to observationally study factors influencing clouds in the trades, how they will respond to warming, and their link to other components…
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems · 2020 · 68 citations
Senior authorCorrespondingThe goal of this study is to understand the mechanisms controlling the isotopic composition of the water vapor near the surface of tropical oceans, at the scale of about a hundred kilometers and a month. In the tropics, it has long been observed that the isotopic compositions of rain and vapor near the surface are more depleted when the precipitation rate is high. This is called the "amount effect." Previous studies, based on observations or models with parameterized convection, have highlighted…
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems · 2020 · 64 citations
Abstract Climate models struggle to accurately represent the highly reflective boundary layer clouds overlying the remote and stormy Southern Ocean. We use in situ aircraft observations from the Southern Ocean Clouds, Radiation and Aerosol Transport Experimental Study (SOCRATES) to evaluate Southern Ocean clouds in a cloud‐resolving large‐eddy simulation (LES) and two coarse resolution global atmospheric models, the CESM Community Atmosphere Model (CAM6) and the GFDL Atmosphere Model (AM4), run…
Lightning declines over shipping lanes following regulation of fuel sulfur emissions
Atmospheric chemistry and physics · 2025-03-11 · 8 citations
articleOpen accessAbstract. Aerosol interactions with clouds represent a significant uncertainty in our understanding of the Earth system. Deep convective clouds may respond to aerosol perturbations in several ways that have proven difficult to elucidate with observations. Here, we leverage the two busiest maritime shipping lanes in the world, which emit aerosol particles and their precursors into an otherwise relatively clean tropical marine boundary layer, to make headway on the influence of aerosol on deep con…
Atmospheric chemistry and physics · 2025-05-26 · 4 citations
articleOpen accessAbstract. This study examines the impact of the interaction of cloud microphysics and macrophysics with the large-scale circulation on the stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition (SCT) using a large-eddy simulation (LES) combined with weak-temperature-gradient (WTG) parameterization. The WTG approximates large-scale circulation by inducing domain-mean subsidence to counter buoyancy perturbations relative to a reference thermodynamic profile. A stationary sea-salt sprayer perturbs transitioning cloud…
Recent grants
NSF · $419k · 2019–2024
NSF · $389k · 2019–2024
Collaborative Research: Isotopic Fractionation in Snow (IFRACS)
NSF · $216k · 2013–2017
Frequent coauthors
- 130 shared
Christopher S. Bretherton
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
- 32 shared
Robert Wood
University of Washington
- 29 shared
S. J. Doherty
Seattle University
- 28 shared
Grégoire Védeau
Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives
- 28 shared
Caroline Muller
Institute of Science and Technology Austria
- 25 shared
Camille Risi
- 24 shared
Françoise Vimeux
Université Paris-Saclay
- 22 shared
Jacqueline M Nugent
Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Awards & honors
- 2018 AGU Editors’ Citation for Excellence in Refereeing from…
- 2016 AGU Editors’ Citation for Excellence in Refereeing from…
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