Convective Studies Field Campaigns
The GHRC provides data for field campaigns related to convective studies, which ties into two of GHRC’s core activities, storm hazards and lightning. These campaigns include CPEX, CPEX-AW, and CPEX-CV, which aim to answer questions about convective storm initiation, organization, growth, and dissipation.
GHRC also supported the Lake Victoria Basin High Impact Weather Lake System (Highway) Project. HIGHWAY delivered regular weather forecasts and severe weather warnings for fishing boats and small transport vessels on Lake Victoria.
Another large campaign supported by GHRC was the GOES-R Post Launch Test (PLT). The campaign obtained a collection of coincident airborne, satellite, ground based, and near surface measurements of surface weather phenomena to test, validate, and improve the accuracy of GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) measurements. The GOES-R PLT has served as the first test campaign for the Field Campaign Explorer (FCX) due to the variety of datasets involved.
More recently, GHRC has supported the Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS). While convection typically brings to mind spring and summer thunderstorms, winter weather is also focused on convective activity. IMPACTS is the first comprehensive study of East Coast snowstorms in 30 years. Among its goals are observing and investigating convective snowbands, how they form, and how to better model them with numerical weather models.
