Since nearly three decades my research is dedicated to the development and application of novel observation techniques to better understand the processes determining the atmospheric water cycle.
Observations and process knowledge are used to evaluate models in order to arrive at better
weather forecasts and climate predictions. Specific research interests are
• Development of novel microwave instrumentation for ground-based, airborne and satellite operation including radiative transfer studies and retrieval development and transfer to operational environment
• Use of synergetic measurements at atmospheric supersites for process understanding and model evaluation, e.g. established Jülich Observatory for Cloud Evolution (JOYCE), (co-) organized of several international field campaigns
• Understanding boundary layer processes, i.e. thermodynamic and dynamic structure, diurnal evolution, convection, and cloud physics, i.e. formation, precipitation formation
• Investigating the ability of numerical weather prediction models to correctly represent water cycle parameters, e.g. by developing and using forward simulators for fair model intercomparisons
• Detecting the climate change signal in water cycle related quantities from longterm microwave satellite observation
• Exploiting novel high-resolution analysis for investigating spatio-temporal variability of renewable energy, i.e. solar and wind energy