What knowledge gaps related to convective cloud-scale dynamics and microphysics should we expect to fill with the new spaceborne missions?

Comprehensive statistics on convective motions and associated microphysical properties are urgently needed for evaluating the representation of convection in next-generation storm-resolving global weather and climate prediction models. With most of Earth's surface covered by water, space-based observations are ideal for acquiring such measurements at a global scale. The coming decade will feature several new space-borne missions (ESA-JAXA Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE), NASA-Investigation of Convective Updrafts (INCUS), NASA-Atmosphere Observing System (AOS)) specifically focused on improving our understanding of convective processes, evolution, and outcomes.

Despite being deployed hundreds of kilometers above the Earth's surface, these planned missions are expected to offer unprecedented measurement capabilities, that in many ways will be superior to those available today from suborbital platforms. Furthermore, the convection measurement capabilities from the different planned space missions are based on different measurement techniques and are applied at different resolutions and detection limits. As such, they will provide highly complementary insights into the different parts and processes of the spectrum of convection.

Here, a suite of forward simulations using state-of-the-art-instrument simulators applied to a wide range of numerical model output are used to examine the strengths and limitations of each measurement approach. Emphasis is given to the relationship between convective scales and spaceborne sensor resolutions and to the interpretation of the different measurement techniques (based on a pulse pair Doppler W-band radar, a reflectivity time-difference Ka-band radar and a displaced phase center antenna Doppler Ka and W-band radar for EarthCARE, INCUS and AOS, respectively) when applied to the same numerically simulated atmospheric scenes.