Cascade

In Cascade (2008-2011), we studied the organisation of tropical convection at different time-and-length scales, using observations from CloudSat and CALIPSO. Eventually, the observations will be used to evaluate high-resolution simulations using the MetOffice UK Unified Model in a limited area setup over West Africa to capture African Easterly Waves during the AMMA campaign in the summer of 2006; and over the Indo-Pacific region to capture the Madden-Julian Oscillation. The figure on the right (Stein et al., 2011) shows the mean zonal vertical cloud structure of the West African monsoon, as observed by CloudSat and CALIPSO. The CloudSat radar signal penetrates through the most clouds and allows us to observe the microphysical vertical structure of clouds and precipitation, whereas the CALIPSO lidar signal is sensitive to smaller particles and retrieves further information on cirrus clouds and cloud tops. If you are inside the Reading University network (or have a Reading username and password), you can look at some of the work I'm doing by following this link (takes you outside the Departmental pages).