Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/W007924/1
MITRE: Mesoscale convective systems over India, Tracking, Research, and Experimentation
Fellowship Award
- Fellow:
- Dr K Hunt, University of Reading, Meteorology
- Grant held at:
- University of Reading, Meteorology
- Science Area:
- Atmospheric
- Earth
- Freshwater
- Marine
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Unknown
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Natural Resource Management
- Pollution and Waste
- Science Topics:
- Water In The Atmosphere
- Monsoon systems
- Deep convection
- Regional & Extreme Weather
- Data analysis
- Environmental Informatics
- Abstract:
- India receives 80% of its yearly rainfall during the summer monsoon, which is active from June through September. The primary cause of this rainfall is convection, where solar heating of the surface (and surface warming of the lower atmosphere) causes updrafts which lift moist air into the cooler upper atmosphere where it condenses and rains out. Convection exists on a range of scales, from individual cells tens of metres across, to tropical storms and cyclones thousands of kilometres across. In the monsoon, however, it is most commonly organised into systems from several to several hundred kilometres in scale, known as mesoscale convective systems (MCSs). MCSs have a complex structure, typically consisting of regions of both convective updrafts and stratiform outflow, they are responsible for a majority of the total monsoon rainfall as well as a majority of the extreme rainfall events occurring year-round. Despite their importance, they have not been studied in great detail over India, owing to the difficulty in tracking and collecting information about them. This project aims to vastly expand our understanding of the variability of MCSs over India and the surrounding region, to explore their role in sustaining and modifying the monsoon, to quantify how well they are forecast and uncover potential sources of forecast error, and to project their response to climate change. Work will be carried out in collaboration with partners at the Met Office, the National Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (Delhi), the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (Pune) and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. The first task will be to track MCSs in satellite data, where they show up as large areas of very cold cloud, to create a multi-decade database of MCS tracks. Using this database, we will seek to understand what causes MCSs to occur preferentially in particular locations (e.g. soil moisture, vertical wind shear) and at particular times (e.g. monsoon variability), as well as how their structure and intensity change due to environmental (e.g. the Himalayas) and meteorological (e.g. local atmospheric stability) stimuli. The project will then move to a monsoon-orientated point of view, where we will seek to understand how MCSs assist the monsoon in advancing northward through India during its onset in June, and how they interact with the tropical depressions that pass through monsoonal India several times per season. The second half the project focus on investigating MCS behaviour in models, ranging from those used for weather forecasting to those used to project climate change. Using archived forecast data from our partner institutes, we will quantify how well MCSs are captured in these models, at short range (< 7 days), medium range (7-15 days) and seasonal range (15-60 days). We will explore sources of forecast error, such as the timing of convection, and test whether statistical techniques could be used to improve future forecasts. Finally, we will quantify how MCS frequency, intensity, and behaviour will respond to projected climate change scenarios. We will apply tracking techniques to established climate model (e.g. CMIP6) output, but will also run our own high-resolution simulations focused over India, capable of more accurate MCS simulation. We expect that the methodology and results of this project will be valuable to other researchers working on monsoons and convective systems across the globe; to forecasters of Indian weather; and for policymakers exploring long term disaster mitigation and water security strategies over South Asia.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/W007924/1
- Grant Stage:
- Awaiting Event/Action
- Scheme:
- Research Fellowship
- Grant Status:
- Active
- Programme:
- IRF
This fellowship award has a total value of £574,207
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Estate Costs | DI - Staff | DA - Other Directly Allocated | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £23,324 | £180,529 | £67,818 | £257,929 | £10,188 | £34,422 |
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