The inner working of clouds is getting a closer examination under a federally backed research project by Michigan Technological University.
The National Science Foundation is giving the Houghton school a $1.4 million grant to study how clouds' internal structure affects the earth.
The work is being conducted at Michigan Tech's Great Lakes Research Center.
The grant will pay most of the cost of building a chamber that will let researchers study cloud processes under temperatures, pressures and humidity levels ranging from sea level to lower levels of the stratosphere.
Construction will take place in 2011.
Chief investigator Raymond Shaw says he expects it to be in the shape of a cylinder, two meters in diameter and one meter high.
