Clouds in current and in a warming climate

We see them in our everyday lives. They make skies and sunsets even more beautiful, inspiring painters all over the world. But what are clouds? What are the physical processes occurring within a cloud? Do they all look alike, or are there different types of clouds? Why? Beyond our small human scale, how are clouds distributed at large, planetary scales? How do they couple and interact with the large-scale circulation of the atmosphere? What do the physics of cloud formation tell us about the hydrological cycle, including mean and extreme precipitation, in our current climate and in a warming world? What role do they play in the global energetics of the planet, for instance by reflecting the incoming shortwave radiation from the Sun, and by reducing the outgoing longwave radiation to space, because of their high altitudes and thus cold temperatures? These are the questions that will be addressed in these five lectures.