The INCUS mission is comprised of a train of three smallsats, each of which will carry a Ka-band cloud radar. A passive microwave radiometer will be housed on the middle spacecraft. The three low earth orbit smallsats will be separated by time intervals of 30, 90 and 120 seconds (ts), thereby allowing for the rapid and systematic sampling of the same storm system by all three platforms. A novel approach has been developed in which the changes in radar reflectivity over these short time intervals are related to the CMF. A significant amount of research has already been undertaken in preparation for the INCUS mission. These include: (1) conducting an extensive suite of large-domain, high spatial ( and temporal (30 second output) resolution Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) and Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model simulations of convective storms within 15 different regions around the tropics; (2) tracking the modeled storm updrafts throughout their lifecycles with the cloud object tracking tool tobac; (3) processing the tracked storm updrafts using instrument forward models; and (4) analyzing ground-based radar observations obtained during the TRACER and ESCAPE field campaigns using newly-developed adaptive scanning techniques. This presentation will provide a brief description of the INCUS mission, as well as the modeling approaches being utilized. This will be followed by three specific highlights arising from this research. First, we will present statistics of the simulated CMF as a function of environment, storm morphology and storm lifetimes. Second, we will examine the temporal scales of updraft variability within the simulated storms. Finally, a proof of concept of the INCUS t approach relating changes in reflectivity to CMF using ground-based radar observations will be provided.

