Scale-interaction of convection and its role in key African meteorological processes using novel observations and model simulations.

在整个非洲，许多地区都容易受到气候变化和变率的影响，但我们对区域气候系统的理解仍然存在很大差距，特别是由于缺乏非洲大陆许多地区的观测数据（James et al., 2018）。对未来变化的预估一般是由低分辨率全球气候模式提供的，其中许多模式不能准确地再现当今的气候学。例如，在南部非洲，一些气候模型将降水率高估了300% （Munday和Washington， 2018年），而在东非，降雨量年周期的偏差是由于未能代表印度洋的平均流量状态（Hirons和Turner， 2018年）。这种不准确性使人们对模式预测这些区域气候未来如何变化的能力产生了怀疑。我的研究目的是利用新的模式和观测来探索对流在气象过程中的作用，同时评估对流尺度模式的附加价值。可以分析不同模式、再分析和观测数据集的区域环流表现之间的差异，从而推断模式分辨率和对流参数化对气候系统模拟的影响。这种模式评估项目对于询问气候变化的模拟趋势至关重要，例如，通过指示变化信号背后的过程，预测南部非洲雨季的缩短（Dunning et al., 2018）。除此之外，这些高分辨率数据集提供了探索对流在区域气候动力学中的作用的机会，这可能有助于更好地理解控制当前气候变率的过程。这种发展具有重要的社会经济意义，因为水、能源和粮食安全往往与区域气候紧密相关（Conway et al., 2015）。

Across Africa, many regions are vulnerable to climate change and variability, yet large gaps remain in our understanding of regional climate systems, particularly due to a lack of observational data over many areas of the continent (James et al., 2018). Projections of future change are generally provided by low resolution global climate models, many of which fail to accurately reproduce present-day climatology. For example, over southern Africa, some climate models overestimate precipitation rates by as much as 300% (Munday and Washington, 2018) and over East Africa, biases in the rainfall annual cycle result from failures to represent the mean state of flow over the Indian Ocean (Hirons and Turner, 2018). Such inaccuracies cast doubt over the ability of models to predict how these regional climates will change in the future. My research aims to explore the role of convection in meteorological processes using novel models and observations alongside evaluating the added value of convective-scale models. There is scope to analyse the differences between the representation of regional circulations across model, reanalysis and observational datasets to infer the effect of model resolution and convection parameterisation on the simulation of the climate system. Such model evaluation projects are vital to interrogate modelled trends of climate change, such as the anticipated shortening of the rainy season over southern Africa, by giving an indication of the processes that underlie signals of change (Dunning et al., 2018). Alongside this, these high-resolution datasets present an opportunity to explore the role of convection in regional climate dynamics, which may contribute to a better understanding of the processes controlling current climate variability. Such developments are of significant socioeconomic importance, as water, energy and food security are often tightly coupled to regional climate (Conway et al., 2015).