Hi, I'm Sami! I'm currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at SNL continuing to work on cirrus clouds! I joined the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington in Autumn 2018. I was advised by Professor Emeritus Thomas Ackerman and supported by the NSF-PIRE grant International Partnership for Cirrus Studies, which also brought together a community of researchers around North America and Europe studying the problem of cirrus clouds. I helped organize student and early career monthly seminars from 2019 to 2023. I studied tropical convection and cirrus clouds in high resolution models (small domain to global scales).

Cirrus clouds are notoriously difficult to simulate and observe due to their thin optical depth and complex ice characteristics. Recent progress in modelling has allowed models to explicitly resolve convection at the kilometer-scale. These cloud-resolving models (CRMs) may more accurately represent the physical processes. Nonetheless, CRMs still have a variety of subgrid parameterization schemes, contributing to the differences in ice clouds, especially upper tropospheric cirrus clouds. These uncertainties in the representation of cirrus clouds in CRMs as well as global circulation models and global CRMs, lead to a large uncertainty in the radiative forcing of high clouds to changes in surface temperature.

My work focused on evaluating global CRMs and quantifying the uncertainty related to ice microphysical parameterizations. For more details see my projects.

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In my free time, I enjoy baking sourdough bread (yes, I started during COVID but kept it up and occasionally donate loaves to Community Loaves). I also enjoy walking my dog around Seattle and training him to "talk" using buttons. I stay active by playing soccer and riding my bike around the hills of Seattle.

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Publications

Peer-reviewed
2022

• Tropical Cirrus in Global Storm-Resolving Models. Part I: Role of Deep Convection J. Nugent, S. Turbeville, C. Bretherton, P. Blossey, T. Ackerman
• Tropical Cirrus in Global Storm-Resolving Models. Part II: Cirrus Life Cycle and Top-of-Atmosphere Radiative Fluxes S. Turbeville, J. Nugent, T. Ackerman, C. Bretherton, P. Blossey

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