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January 30, 2026
Location: SB 156
Time: 3:00 pm
Presenter: Lucas Hornung
Starting Small: Challenges and Opportunities in Cloud Microphysics
Despite covering a significant portion of Earth’s surface, clouds and the many processes that drive their creation, evolution, and dissipation remain poorly understood. These uncertainties have made developing high-fidelity cloud microphysics parameterizations one of the key challenges in Earth Systems Modeling. To address this challenge, high-resolution simulations of singular clouds, referred to as Cloud Resolving Models, have been utilized to gain a deeper understanding of cloud processes and better constrain parameterizations.
My presentation will highlight the importance of clouds on the global climate, explain some of the historic approaches to representing clouds in Earth Systems Models, and showcase my current and future research using Cloud Resolving Models to address key unanswered questions in cloud microphysics.
Lucas Hornung is a first year PhD student at the University of California, Davis where he works under Prof. Adele Igel in the Cloud Physics Group. Mr. Hornung is a born-and-raised Houstonian and attended Long Island University-Post on a tennis scholarship where he earned bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science. As an undergraduate, Mr. Hornung interned at Brookhaven National Laboratory under Dr. Yangang Liu and researched cloud microphysics-turbulence interactions. With aspirations of entering academia, Mr. Hornung is dedicated to fostering inclusive research environments, increasing educational accessibility, and building bridges between the academic enterprise and the broader public.
