Science Questions

• What are the roles of cumulus convection and spatial variations in land cover in depleting low-level water vapor as it is advected into the SGP region?
• What are the relationships between cumulus clouds and aerosols and the soil-plant-atmosphere exchange of energy, carbon, and water at the site?
• How do soil moisture and land cover changes, such as agricultural harvesting, impact the surface energy, carbon, and water fluxes, and can they impact local and regional cumulus cloud formation at the SGP site?
• How do land surface processes at the SGP affect atmospheric aerosol loading and chemistry and what are the resulting effects on the microphysical and macrophysical properties of cumulus cloud fields?
• How well do the local measurements of the sensible, latent, and carbon fluxes made at the SGP represent the domain average fluxes?