Faculty of Graduate Studies

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Dynamics & Mammatus Clouds in the Anvil Outflow of Deep Convection Over the Tiwi Islands
(2022-12-14) Howard, Shaya George; Whiteway, James A.
The research that is presented in this thesis is based on data that comes from the EMERALD-2 research campaign. EMERALD-2 focused on “Hector” which is a convective system that occurs regularly over the Tiwi Islands, just off the coast of northern Australia. On December 2nd, 2002 mammatus clouds developed on the base of the anvil outflow cirrus clouds produced by Hector. During the experiment, the Egrett & King Air research aircraft carried instruments that measured temperature, pressure, wind velocity, moisture & cloud structure in the anvil outflow of Hector. The main objective was to analyze the data and identify a possible formation mechanism for the mammatus clouds. Atmospheric conditions were favourable for cloud base detrainment instability and a density overhang to cause the formation of mammatus clouds. It was found that the gradients of liquid water static energy and potential temperature were negative at the base of the Mammatus clouds.