Unravelling crop – cloud interactions and the need for more super super-computers

Clouds influence plant functioning and crop production but plants in turn influence cloud formation. Understanding this interaction is important both for improved weather predictions and understanding future climate effects on crops. Martin Sikma (PhD student at CSA) is involved in a project led by Prof. Jordi Vila (Meteorology & Air Quality group) that is starting to understanding how this interaction works. They were recently interviewed by the magazine SURF about their work. In addition to highlighting the novelty and importance of their work, they also stressed the need for access to stronger computers and greater computation capacity if complex climate vegetation interactions are to be explored at relevant detail and scale.   

For the article (in Dutch) see here