A scientist, artist and engineer walk into a room 

The Benton Museum held a discussion related to their recently opened Clouds exhibition, titled “Clouds: A Discussion at the Intersection of Art, Science and Engineering” on Sept. 25. The three panelists of varying disciplines discussed cloud-related topics such as how clouds relate to their work, clouds’ impact on climate change and the effect art can have on its audience. 

The discussion was moderated by George Matheou, an associate professor in the school of Mechanical, Aerospace and Manufacturing Engineering (SoMAM). Matheou is well-known for his research in computational fluid dynamics. 

The panelists consisted of Ann Fridlind, a physical scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), who is researching how each cloud type can affect the weather and climate change. Helen Glazer is a visual artist from Baltimore, Md., whose work blends photography and sculptures. Lastly, there was Miad Yazdani, a principal fellow at the RTX Research Center (RTRC). 

“RTX gives a few people the most challenging and complex problems to solve, and I am one of those people,” Yazdani said about his role at the RTRC. 

Matheou’s first question to the three panelists was about the role clouds play in their work. Fridlind called clouds “the enormous thermostat of Earth,” due to their ability to reflect solar power from the sun and for trapping heat and moisture. Fridlind also argued that clouds and their physics make it hard to determine how fast temperatures have risen due to greenhouse gases, or in finding a terminal temperature for an emissions scenario.  

Glazer observed that many people have likely tried to find faces, objects and shapes within clouds in order to relate these abstract objects to known concepts. This was one reason for Glazer’s obsession with clouds. Another reason came up when Glazer started looking at photos of fluid dynamics experiments, seeing the uniform motion of air become disordered in a fraction of a second. She reasoned that photography can be a method to capture this ordered chaos. 

Because he works for an aerospace company, Yazdani is concerned about clouds in relation to aviation, particularly on how to reduce aviation’s effects on climate change. Interestingly, aviation’s primary cause to climate change is not carbon dioxide emissions, but contrails — the white plumes of gas coming off an aircraft’s exhaust. These plumes, which contain a mixture of water vapor and other particulars found in an aircraft engine, trap outgoing radiation from below. He wants to build a contrail forecast so that he can predict when contrails form, how long they’ll last and quantify their effects on climate change. 

Matheou asked the trio how they deal with the “transient nature of clouds.” 

Yazdani and Fridlind both discussed the challenges of building a forecast of cloud movement and formation, as one needs to build it on both a large and small scale. Yazdani needs a 12-hour forecast for a cloud that an aircraft will zip through in seconds. Fridlind talks about using supercomputers to compute the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean that progresses over hundreds of years. 

Glazer, continuing her previous point on capturing cloud movement through photography, says that photos can capture the transience of clouds as well. She talks about how she takes multiple photos, prints them out and stitches them together to create a panorama. To bring out the cloud’s motion even more she paints the print with pastels. 

Matheou’s final question for the panelists touched on the opportunities and challenges of using visual media to showcase clouds to a public audience.  

Glazer talked about how the medium of art can help people become more active in environmental preservation. She argues that if you present art that gets an emotional response from its audience, you will build an emotional connection between art and audience. Thus, if you present nature photos that elicit an emotional response, you will get more people involved in the wellbeing of the environment and its preservation.  

Yazdani talked about how RTX would mount cameras on the back of aircrafts to visualize contrails at different altitudes. Using this visual data, Yazdani found a correlation between local atmospheres and an aircraft’s contrail, concluding that less contrails were made closer to the ground.  

Fridlind emphasized Glazer’s point about art and the emotional responses it gets. She argues that now it is more important than ever for scientists to share their research with the public, in the face of massive budget cuts to research projects. One avenue is through panels like these, which the GISS have done several of at the Hudson River Museum. She thinks another way to engage people with scientific research can be through the “get ready with me” trend on TikTok. 

Fridlind suggested these ideas because she thinks more people should learn about the amazing things scientists and researchers are studying in the face of federal funding cuts. To her, “the most exciting scientific research is fundamentally defined at the boundary of what is known and unknown.”