Cloud-CCI+ SEVIRI CRE Case Study: Tracked DCCs Over Africa, May-August 2016

A Lagrangian perspective on deep convective cloud cores and anvils over sub-Saharan Africa from 18°W to 46°E and 31°S to 15°N. The dataset tracks cloud properties and radiative effects over each cloud's lifetime across four months from May to August 2016. It accompanies a submitted article by William K. Jones, Martin Stengel, and Philip Stier from the University of Oxford.

Use Cases

• Analyzing the lifecycle evolution of deep convective clouds based on tracked core and anvil properties.
• Studying the cloud radiative effect over time based on per-timestep property data.
• Validating satellite-based cloud tracking algorithms over the African continent.
• Investigating spatial patterns of deep convection based on daily gridded mask data.

Strengths

• Provides four months of continuous daily tracking data for deep convective clouds.
• Includes separate files for spatial masks and statistical properties, offering both geospatial and tabular perspectives.
• Covers a large geographic region over sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 18°W to 46°E and 31°S to 15°N.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is limited to a four-month period in 2016, which may not be representative of seasonal or interannual variability.

Provenance

Source

University of Oxford

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing using SEVIRI instrument data, with tracked deep convective cloud cores and anvils.

Time Range

May 2016 to August 2016

Geography

Sub-Saharan Africa (approximately 18°W to 46°E, 31°S to 15°N)