Extreme orogenic convective storms in southeastern South America are divided into three categories: storms with deep convective cores, storms with wide convective cores, and storms containing broad stratiform regions. Data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite’s Precipitation Radar show that storms with wide convective cores are the most frequent, tending to originate near the ...

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model’s ability to forecast convective morphological evolution is examined for 37 convective systems. The simulations used Thompson microphysics with 3-km horizontal grid spacing. Ten convective mode classifications were used. An objective score was developed to determine the accuracy of the simulated morphologies considering a normalized duration of e...

In this study we present a scheme for calculating the characteristics of multi-layer cloudiness and precipitation for Earth system models of intermediate complexity (EMICs). This scheme considers three-layer stratiform cloudiness and single-column convective clouds. It distinguishes between ice and droplet clouds as well. Precipitation is calculated by using cloud lifetime, which depends on clo...

Because of their large grid-box size, global climate models do not explicitly represent small-scale processes occurring in cloud systems in the marine boundary layer. One such process, which is thought to have an important climatological effect, is the production of warm rain. Parameterizations of this process typically partition the liquid water into a cloud and a rain component. The rate of c...

Realistic rendering of clouds involves solving the complex interaction of light within the cloud and with its environment. Interactive methods achieve efficient cloud rendering by ignoring several lighting effects. However, these effects are visually important, and removing them strongly reduces realism. We present a novel approach for capturing the important effects of multiple anisotropic Mie...

The near-real time retrieval of low stratiform cloud (LSC) coverage is of vital interest for such disciplines as meteorology, transport safety, economy and air quality. Within this scope, a novel methodology is proposed which provides the LSC occurrence probability estimates for a satellite scene. The algorithm is suited for the 1 × 1 km Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data and...