Email: marzuki @riznet.org,
djuky_hmi @yahoo.com
Equatorial convective activity around Indonesia is the most powerful in the world. That activates global atmospheric circulation, thus affecting global climate and weather. Valuable data have been collected under a joint Japan-Indonesia collaborative project in which Shimane University participates by installing various remote sensing instruments to measure equatorial convective activities in West Sumatra-Indonesia. Such data are also useful in gaining added insight into the characteristics of rainfall in West Sumatra. The main facility used is the Equatorial Atmosphere Radar (EAR). However, physical quantities including wind, temperature, rainfall rate, and drop size distribution obtained from such instruments need to be calibrated and compared in terms of consistency with atmospheric dynamics. Such calibration and validation will lead to improvement of remote sensing algorithms to estimate atmospheric quantities.
For the above reasons, I plan to focus my research on making comparisons between: (i) EAR-derived wind profiles and rainfall intensities, and drop size distribution. This will improve our understanding of the coupling between cloud microphysics and convective activities. (ii) EAR-derived wind data may be degraded by back scattering from raindrops. To evaluate this uncertainty, and to possibly improve the accuracy of EAR wind data, Shimane University water-vapor data (brightness temperature) in the microwave to millimeter wave region may be useful. This can enhance the usefulness of the radiometer. (iii) Finally, overall analyses of seasonal and annual dependence of atmosphere conditions derived from these remote sensors will be attempted, to better understand the characteristics of weather and climate in West Sumatra, which are also related to global-scale phenomena such as El-Nino.