CIRES Council of Fellows>

Christopher W. Fairall

Ph.D. Physics, Michigan State University, 1970

Supervisory Physicist
NOAA/ESRL, Physical Sciences Division

E-mail: chris.fairall@noaa.gov
Office: David Skaggs Research Center 3B141
Phone: 303-497-3253

Research Interests

Dr. Fairall's current research includes air-sea-ice interactions, boundary-layer processes, clouds, optical/radio propagation in the atmosphere, and instrumentation/measurement techniques.

Current Research Projects

• Measuring, parameterizing, and modeling atmospheric surface fluxes during SHEBA.
• Shipboard measurements of cloud-radiative properties in the tropical western Pacific: The Nauru-99 experiment.
• Toward a definitive determination of air-sea gas exchange
• Shipboard monitoring of stratocumulus cloud properties in the PACS region.
• Shipboard monitoring of tropical marine cloud properties in the JASMINE region
• The Joint Air-Sea Monsoon Investigation (JASMINE99): A pilot study.

Honors and Awards

• Member of the Science team for the NASA First ISSCP Regional Experiment (FIRE-III)
• Member of the ARM Science Team Executive Committee, chairman of the ARM Tropical Western Pacific Science Advisory Committee
• Member of the PACS/EPIC2001 executive committee
• Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

Selected Publications

• Fairall, C.W., 1991: The humidity/temperature sensitivity of clear-air radars in the convective boundary layer. J. Appl. Meteor. 30, 1064-1074.
• Ruffieux, D. P.O.G. Persson, C.W. Fairall, and D.E. Wolfe, 1995: Ice pack and lead surface energy budgets during LeadEx 92. J. Geophys. Res., 100, 4593-4612.
• Fairall, C.W., J. Kepert, and G.J. Holland, 1995: The effect of sea spray on surface energy transports over the ocean. The Global Atmospheric Ocean System, 2, 121-142.
• White, A.B., C.W. Fairall, and J.B. Snider, 1995: Surface-based remote sensing of marine boundary layer cloud properties. J. Atmos. Sci., 52, 2827-2838.
• Fairall, C.W., E.F. Bradley, D.P. Rogers, J.B. Edson, and G.S. Young, 1996: Bulk parameterization of air-sea fluxes for TOGA COARE. J. Geophys. Res.,101, 3747-3767.
• Fairall, C. W., J. E. Hare, J. B. Edson, and W. McGillis, 1999: Parameterization and measurement of air-sea gas transfer. Bound.-Layer Meteorol., to appear.