Jonathan Mitchell, professor of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences at UCLA, will lead UCLA’s part in a new $3 million international research project on the physics of clouds in planetary atmospheres. The three-year project, directed by Caroline Morley of the University of Texas at Austin, is one of 12 Targeted Simons Research Groups selected for funding by Simons Foundation International. It brings together Earth climate scientists, planetary scientists and astrophysicists from institutions across the United States and Europe. As one of nine principal investigators, Mitchell will recruit and advise a new postdoctoral researcher and two UCLA graduate students, within a network of postdoctoral scholars who are advised across institutions and disciplines. The team will combine theory and simulations with observations, including data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, to learn which cloud processes are shared by all planets and what other worlds can teach us about Earth’s climate.
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