A Network of Portable, Low-Cost, X-Band Radars

Radar is a unique tool to get an overview on the weather situation, given its high spatio- temporal resolution. Over 60 years, researchers have been investigating ways for obtaining the best use of radar. As a result we often find assurances on how much radar is a useful tool, and it is! After this initial statement, however, regularly comes a long list on how to increase the accuracy of radar or in what direction to move for improving it. Perhaps we should rather ask: is the resulting data good enough for our application? The answers are often more complicated than desired. At first, some people expect miracles. Then, when their wishes are disappointed, they discard radar as a tool: both attitudes are wrong; radar is a unique tool to obtain an excellent overview on what is happening: when and where it is happening. At short ranges, we may even get good quantitative data. But at longer ranges it may be impossible to obtain the desired precision, e.g. the precision needed to alert people living in small catchments in mountainous terrain. We would have to set the critical limit for an alert so low that this limit would lead to an unacceptable rate of false alarm

Innovative, green, floating radiosondes to track small-scale fluctuations along isopycnic surfaces in and around warm clouds

Clouds are an important source of uncertainty in climate modelling and weather prediction models. Warm clouds have a cloud top that doesn’t contain any ice forms and are found to be responsible for 31% of the world’s rainfall. Hence, innovative, green, ultralight radiosondes are being conceived within the context of the H2020 MSCA ITN ClOud-MicroPhysics-turbuLEnce-Telemetry (COMPLETE) network, which aims to characterise the cloud boundary, and develop the current understanding of cloud physics and related turbulent dynamics. The radiosondes conceived within this network will contribute to the current understanding of microphysical processes in clouds in a range of a few 100m