Brian Mapes
Associate Professor
Miami time lapse webcams
of weather (looking south). An Archive
of (big) cloud scene movies from some some days in 2011.
Research interests and themes
My work began with studies of atmospheric convective clouds and
storms. But the larger context of tropical weather and climate must
always be admitted, or else storm meteorology is just stamp
collecting. That larger picture requires understanding other
processes like radiation, surface effects, mixing, and of course
dynamics: the glue that connects all these parts. Working with
postdocs, students, and collaborators, I maintain a 3-pronged effort
that builds from local scales (very definite and tangible, but
always dependent on what lies beyond), via quantitative analysis and
abstraction, up toward global scales (vast and pervasive yet
evasive: everywhere and nowhere).
1. We study convective
clouds
and
storms
and
local
atmospheric
structure
(especially
in
the vertical) , using observations (radars, aircraft,
soundings, satellites) and cloud-resolving models.
2. We study the large-scale
net thermodynamic and dynamic effects of convection and
related processes in the atmosphere, guided by observations; and
then try to encapsulate the essence in simple models (the
parameterization problem).
3. We study several
large-scale weather and climate phenomena using regional and
global observations and models, to lend more context and meaning to
the activities described above
Extreme weather events in climate datasets:
Extreme events 1870-2008
in a new global reanalysis: a clickable atlas
Extreme ANOMALIES
(from mean seasonal cycle) 1870-2008 in a new global reanalysis: a
clickable atlas
Heaviest rain events in
1998-2007 decade: a clickable atlas
(2006 - stale) Climate
models and instantaneous point (column) observations: can we span
the gap?
Here is a 2006 page of clickable
access to plots of high-resolution GCM column outputs.
A Nov 2005 presentation on column-oriented analyses of both
observations and models is linked below.
[ppt - 6MB but Mac
figures may fail Windows users] [pdf - about 9MB]
Miscellaneous
RefWorks usage
