Thijs Heus

I'm interested in clouds, how they work, and what their role is in the Earth System. The process studies I'm conducting are fundamental, mainly focussing on the behaviour of cumulus clouds, be it shallow, be it deep.

Much of my work thus far has been on turbulent mixing between the cloud and its environment, but I'm also looking at how the vertical distribution of cloudy air (the cloud overlap) affects the Earth's radiation budget, in spatial and temporal distribution of clouds (including life cycle studies and work on premoistening of air) and on feedbacks of clouds through interactions with the sub cloud layer and the land surface.

I'm currently a member of the Hans Ertel Resarch Group on Clouds and Convection.

To gain better understanding, I mostly work with Large Eddy Simulations. Over the past few years, I've been (co-) leading development on 3 different codes:

• UCLALES - The current working horse of our group
• DALES - The Dutch atmospheric Large Eddy code, that is predominantly (but not exclusively) being used at KNMI, Delft Univeristy of Technology, and Wageningen University.
• and MicroHH - a research project together with Chiel van Heerwaarden on modernizing and optimizing the development of LES codes.