Cathryn Birch
Cathryn Birch is an Academic Research Fellow at the University of Leeds and is part-funded by the Met Office. She utilises observations and convection-permitting models to better understand atmospheric processes related to cloud and convective rainfall. Most of Cathryn’s work has focused on tropical regions such as West Africa and South-East Asia, where she has studied processes related to monsoon systems and severe convective storms. She won the L F Richardson prize in 2014 for work demonstrating the importance of simulating convectively-generated gravity waves for improving the predictability of convective storms in the tropics.
Cathryn Birch visited KIT (Karlsruhe, Campus South) from January 26th to 28th 2016 in the framework of the W2W guest program.
Her visit allowed numerous discussions with the researchers involved in the different W2W projects at KIT, from master students to principal investigators. Cathryn presented an overview of her work about the modelling of tropical convection, which should foster future collaborations. In particular, it is planned that the two PhD students involved in the C2 project, Andreas Schlüter and Peter Vogel, will visit Cathryn in Leeds this year.
Florian Pantillon (right) introducing Cathryn Birch (left) before her presentation on "Towards a better understanding of convective processes and their impacts". Photo: courtesy of Gregor Gläser.