A dragon
graces the roof of a temple near Kaohsiung,
Taiwan.
Mike
Dixon (RAL) evaluates output from S-Pol.
About 20 NCAR researchers, led by Wen-Chau Lee
(EOL), are in Taiwan at various points this month
for the Terrain-influenced Monsoon Rainfall Experiment
(TiMREX) field campaign, which runs May 15–June
30.
TiMREX is a joint U.S.-Taiwan project
conducted on the plains and in the western mountain
slope region of southern Taiwan. The research focuses
on the physics of heavy rain and flood-producing
convective systems—and the difficulty of forecasting
such events—in a complex environment. Influences
include the southwesterly summer monsoon, land-sea
contrasts, mountainous terrain, and the mei-yu front
(a persistent east-west zone of disturbed weather
during spring stretching from the east China coast
across Taiwan and eastward into the Pacific).
“There are places in Taiwan that typically
have heavy rainfall, but it varies from year to
year and from storm to storm,” explains Tammy
Weckwerth (EOL), one of the project’s investigators. “What
we’re trying to do with TiMREX is understand
the processes better so that we can better predict
where that rain is goi ng to fall.”
