Monthly Archives: April 2019

The sky is the limit – How tall buildings affect wind and air quality

By: Denise Hertwig Based on current UN estimates, by 2050 over 6.6 billion people (68% of the total population) will be living in cities. Across the world, tall (> 50 m height) and super-tall (> 300 m) buildings already define … Continue reading

Posted in Boundary layer, Climate, Urban meteorology | Leave a comment

Balloon measurements at Stromboli suggest radioactivity contributes charge in volcanic plumes

By: Martin Airey Volcanic lightning is an awe-inspiring and humbling display of nature’s power. It results from the breakdown of large electric fields that are generated within the volcanic plume. The processes that result in the accumulation of charge are … Continue reading

Posted in Climate, Convection, Measurements and instrumentation | Tagged | Leave a comment

Convective self-aggregation: growing storms in a virtual laboratory

By: Chris Holloway Figure 1: An example of convective self-aggregation from an RCE simulation using the Met Office Unified Model at 4km grid length with 300 K SST.  Time mean precipitation in mm/day for (a) Day 2 (still scattered), and … Continue reading

Posted in Climate, Climate modelling, Numerical modelling, Tropical convection | Leave a comment

Modelling Ice Sheets in the global Earth System

By: Robin Smith As Till wrote recently, our national flagship climate model (UKESM1, the UK Earth System Model) has been officially released for the community to use, after more than six years in development by a team drawn from across … Continue reading

Posted in Arctic, Climate, Climate modelling, Cryosphere, Numerical modelling | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Boundary Layer and Submesoscale Motions

By: Alan Grant Science is an exciting career, although what you may consider to be exciting will depend on your field. Sometimes things get most exciting when what initially appears to be a frustrating problem turns into an interesting problem. … Continue reading

Posted in Boundary layer, Climate, Numerical modelling, Oceans | Leave a comment