Summary

Convective clouds play an important role in the Earth’s climate system as a driver of large-scale circulations and a primary mechanism for the transport of heat, moisture, aerosols, and momentum throughout the troposphere. Despite their climatic importance, multi-scale models continue to have persistent biases produced by an inadequate representation of convective clouds. To increase our understanding of convective cloud lifecycles and aerosol-convection interactions, we propose a field experiment in the Houston area that will use high-definition radar-based observations and the NSF/NCAR C-130 to track the lifecycle of a large number of convective cells.