R. A. Houze Jr. and the Evolution of the Physics of Convection: From Radar Screen to the Globe

As numerical modeling of weather and climate developed some four decades ago, it became apparent that model resolution and the treatment of sub-grid scale processes produced a myriad of problems. In order to tackle the thorniest of parameterizations, more very detailed observations were necessary. Satellite observations were in their infancy and a series of field experiments (e.g., GATE, MONEX, EMEX/AMEX, SCSMEX, JASMINE, DYNAMO) started to change the view of what tropical convection was really like. Bob Houze was a leader in transforming an early and predominant view of convection as a singular deep cell, first identifying a more expansive stratiform region and then developing the concept of the mesoscale convective cluster. This work has fostered a new way of how convection and large-scale dynamics interact and cooperate, how heat and momentum are transferred. In addition, as we draw closer to cloud resolving models, these detailed descriptions set a benchmark for simulation and calibration.

Bob Houze’s legacy is a global view of the physics of convection through which all components of weather and climate science have benefited. Over the last few decades Bob has produced a extremely influential research group that has promulgated and extended his ideas.