Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere

About Me:

Cynthia Combs received a BS in Earth Science/Meteorology concentration from Central Michigan University (1985) and a MS in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University (1987). She worked at STC-Metsat in Fort Collins, CO from 1988 to 1994 as a scientific programmer processing satellite and ground data on a variety of projects, including the CHANCES satellite cloud climatology, battlefield meteorology, cloud and smoke detection over the 1988 Yellowstone fires, and the NVAP water vapor database. She started at CIRA in 1992 as a research associate, and has worked a variety of projects since. She helped develop techiques to detect cloud liquid water over land using microwave satellite data from SSMI. Later work with microwave data includes identifying and examing RFI in Windsat data over US and analyzing soil moisture measurements from different ground instruments for use in satellite calibration. She has also continued her work with satellite cloud climatologies. An ongoing project now has over ten years of GOES satellite data quality-controled and archived over the continental US, and has completed and currently working on smaller projects focused on local forecasting conditions for National Weather Service offices in Wakefield, VA, Cheyenne, WY, Monterey, CA, and Eureka, CA. She has also done small programming and data processing jobs for several research scientists and have aided Master level students on their research projects, including cloud icing and soil moisture measurement from Windsat. Currently, she is aiding Steve Miller in his NPOESS low light sensor work and working with NASA to grid up Cloudsat data for Giovanni system.

Example of satellite cloud climatologies being used for local forecasts. – Thursday, March 13, 2014

An example of satellite cloud climatologies being used for local forecasts. Monterey was interested in marine stratus layer that often covers their forecast area. Both figures above are cloud percent climatologies from GOES satellite (channels 2 (3.6 mm) and 4 (10.7 mm)) covering June and July 1999-2003 at 1000 UTC over the Monterey/San Francisco area. The color bar at the bottom of each figure represents the percent of low/water clouds during the time period when specific pressure conditions are met. Figure a) is when the sea level pressure between Arcata, CA and San Francisco is less than 2.5 mb, and Figure b) is when the difference is greater than 5 mb. By looking at time series of composites under each set of conditions during the day, the forecaster has a better idea of how far inland the marine stratus layer can be expected to extend, and approximately when to expect it to burn off during the day.