Modulation of Tropical Convective Systems by environmental conditions as observed from multiple satellite measurements

During the Indoex experiment, a specific effort was done in LMD, France, for collecting the satellite data relevant to the region and period, and put them in a well conditioned data base. Meteosat-5 was moved by EUMETSAT over the Indian Ocean, and is the leading satellite for the studies presented here. METEOSAT allows the study and tracking of the convective systems and events, as well as estimation of the upper tropospheric humidity. Other satellite information on the water vapour in the atmosphere or precipitation come from microwave instruments as SSM/I or the instruments of TRMM. Concerning the radiative budget components, ScaRaB on the Russian satellite RESURS was providing outgoing radiative fluxes. All this information is combined here in order to study the fluctuations of convection at different time space scales and its relationship to environmental conditions such as humidity, sea surface temperature,...