Research Brief: ROME among the clouds with new radar metric

To better assess the degree of organisation in radar observations CLEX researchers developed the Radar Organisation Metric (ROME). ROME's statistical properties suggest it is able to distinguish between the degree of convective organisation, and it also captures different regimes of the monsoon in Northern Australia.

In the tropics, deep convection is sometimes scattered across a domain and at other times is spatially clustered in one area. This variable spatial distribution of convection can be referred to as “organisation”, and it correlates well with high rain intensity and severe weather.

To better assess the degree of organisation in radar observations CLEX researchers developed the Radar Organisation Metric (ROME). ROME’s statistical properties suggest it is able to distinguish between the degree of convective organisation, and it also captures different regimes of the monsoon in Northern Australia. Therefore ROME adds new capabilities that other metrics lack in measuring the degree of convective organisation.

Paper: Retsch, M. H., Jakob, C., & Singh, M. S. ( 2020). Assessing convective organization in tropical radar observations. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 125, e2019JD031801. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JD031801