Publication - Meteo @ WUR

Lockdown contribution to spring 2020 record clear skies in western Europe

Spring 2020 was exceptionally sunny for western Europe. Did the reduced air traffic and industrial activity due to lockdowns play a role?

Publication

The anomalous moisture sources of the Rhine during the dry summers of 2003 and 2018

Were you in western Europe during the summer of 2018? Then you probably remember the long lasting drought and high temperatures, resulting in reduced crop yields, forest fires, overheated power plants, and most striking excess death. Now dr. Imme Benedict (congratulations!) investigated the lack of moisture transport towards the Rhine

Clouds

Details of the surface wind matter in tropical convection

Tropical clouds play an important role in the energy balance of the earth. Clouds reflect solar radiation into space, but also absorb heat that is emitted from the surface of the earth. Clouds therefore play an important role in setting the global atmospheric temperature. In turn, the atmospheric temperature determines

Weather

Mega-heatwave amplification due to upstream drought

In a new publication led by Dominik Schumacher of Ghent University (DRY-2-DRY project funded by ERC), we have quantified the impact of upstream drought on mega-heatwaves. With the help of satellite observations and modelling, we quantified the degree to which air masses warm up in drought locations and contribute to

Publication

Surface warming leads to more clouds over temperate forest

In a new paper in Quarterly Journal of Royal Meteorological Society, we present a potential mechanism to explain the observed enhanced cloud formation over Western European forests, such as in Les Landes, France. This work was the MSc thesis project of Peter Bosman, the first author of the paper. We

Clouds

Three new papers on land-atmosphere interactions

We have published three new papers on land-atmosphere interactions, and the soil moisture-precipitation feedback. The first paper Land-Atmosphere Interactions: The LoCo Perspective is published in BAMS, the American Meteorological Society's flagship journal. The paper presents an overview of the research that has been done under the umbrella of the GEWEX

MicroHH

MicroHH reference paper published

The reference paper of MicroHH is accepted as a full contribution to Geoscientific Model Development. This paper describes the final result of several years of model development: MicroHH 1.0. The short summary on the GMD page describes the code as: "MicroHH (www.microhh.org) is a new and

Publication

Clouds can enhance photosynthesis and evapotranspiration

Clouds reflect incoming solar radiation back into space, but also increase the amount of diffuse radiation that reaches the land surface. Our new study (lead author Xabier Pedruzo-Bagazgoitia) shows that thin clouds are beneficial for CO2 assimilation and evapotranspiration, due to the influence of diffuse radiation. This analysis is based

Publication

MicroHH discussion paper online

The reference paper of MicroHH is available as a discussion paper on the website of Geoscientific Model Development. This paper describes the final result of several years of model development: MicroHH 1.0. The short summary on the GMD page describes the code as: "MicroHH (www.microhh.org) is

Publication

More clouds over Western European forests

Our new article in Nature Communications (lead author Ryan Teuling) presents observational proof of enhanced cloud formation over Western European forests. The related press release of Wageningen University can be found here (in Dutch). The sketch below, which is explained in detail in the article, shows the complexity of cloud