Research interests

I am leading the scientific analysis of observations collected at the Barbados Cloud Observatory - a measurement site on Barbados that continuously measures the properties of clouds, rain, aerosol and meteorology. It is the first long-term ground-based remote sensing record within the trades, a region whose clouds are thought to contribute substantially to uncertainties in climate models. The site is a collaborative initiative of MPI-M and the Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) and has been in operation since April 2010.

My personal interests are the interaction of cloud ensembles with their large-scale meteorological environment, e.g. how are boundary layer clouds influenced by the (trade) winds, surface fluxes or large-scale divergence? How important are variations in the ambient aerosol? How do these factors influence the structure of clouds? How much do these shallow clouds rain, and how does this impact the energy budget of the trades?

To answer these questions I have used ground-based and space-borne remote sensing data, Large-Eddy Simulation and simple (bulk) models. it is especially the combination of these different tools that I enjoy.

I visited our site in Barbados twice, which was a great experience. It was incredibly intriguing to see how much variability in the clouds was present, especially because we think of the trades as a relatively steady (maybe boring?) weather regime. It is everything but boring! The sky can change from being completely blue to being filled with clouds in many different shapes (and the other way around) in just in a few hours. What controls these changes? Can we model them? And do they really matter? 

These are questions we have started tackling within the Barbados Initiative. A link with ongoing work will soon follow here. Don't forget to visit our blog!

Last updated: May 3, 2011.