William Jones

AS Atmospheric Sciences

The 2023 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to William Jones for the poster/PICO entitled:

The Diurnal Cycle of the Cloud Radiative Effect of Deep Convective Clouds over Africa from a Lagrangian Perspective (Jones, W.; Stengel, M.; Stier, P.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

William Jones is a PhD student in the Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department of the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the lifecycle and processes of deep convective clouds, and in particular involves the use of storm tracking algorithms with geostationary satellite imagery to better understand deep convection across a wide range of scales. He is also a lead developer of the tobac open-source cloud tracking software.

In his EGU poster, William presented research into the cloud radiative effect of tropical deep convective clouds using observations over Africa from the MSG-SEVIRI instrument. Combining the use of a storm tracking algorithm with derived satellite broadband radiative fluxes showed a strong link between the diurnal cycle and the lifetime of deep convection and the magnitude and sign of the cloud radiative effect. Despite this, the overall radiative balance across all storm clouds is near zero, confirming findings from previous studies. It is uncertain how this radiative balance will change with future climate change.

Publication resulting from the award

Jones, W. K., Stengel, M., and Stier, P.: A Lagrangian perspective on the lifecycle and cloud radiative effect of deep convective clouds over Africa, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 5165–5180, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-5165-2024, 2024.