Professor, Department of Atmospheric Sciences - Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science
Position and Research Expertise
Brian Mapes is a Professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. Mapes is an expert on atmospheric dynamics and thermodynamics, especially interactions between cloudy convection and larger-scale weather patterns.
Teaching and Mentoring
Mapes teaches an undergraduate course in Weather Analysis, and graduate courses in Convective & Mesoscale Meteorology and Applied Data Analysis. He advises graduate students in both the Meteorology & Physical Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences graduate programs.
Scientific Research
Mapes does research aimed at understanding atmospheric cloudy convection and its role in the larger-scale flow. Since weather and climate impacts often come in the form of convective weather events, understanding the linkage is important – sometimes for better predictions, but sometimes just to better appreciate the limits of predictability. Tropical weather especially depends on convection, so some of his research projects focus on seasonal monsoons as well as traveling weather ‘waves’. Other projects are aimed at improving weather and climate models, which must represent convection and clouds in mathematics and in software codes. Since the data age presents growing opportunities to address information-dense 3-dimensional problems like this, Mapes also works to advance information technologies relevant to convection science.
Service at UM and for the Wider Scientific Community
Mapes is working to advance education as well as research. He is co-writing a textbook’s computer lab manual, as part of a larger effort to improve the software-mediated visual experiences that underpin knowledge gains by both students and researchers.
Career Summary
Mapes earned his Ph.D. in 1992 in Atmospheric Sciences, from the University of Washington, Seattle. He has been at the Rosenstiel School since 2004. He is known for his research on the role of convection (cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds) as a process within the flow of the atmosphere as a whole. His early work was observational, learning to consider evenhandedly the complicated and intimately intertwined flows of opaque cloudy air and invisible clear air, mainly in the Tropics. Since then, his interests have grown to include monsoons and other seasonal and climatic phenomena, as well as weather systems and severe local storms, and the never-ending challenge of improving better and better models.
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We study convective clouds and storms and local atmospheric structure (especially in the vertical) , using observations (radars, aircraft, soundings, satellites) and cloud-resolving models.
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We study the large-scale net thermodynamic and dynamic effects of convection and related processes in the atmosphere, guided by observations; and then try to encapsulate the essence in simple models (the parameterization problem).
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We study several large-scale weather and climate phenomena using regional and global observations and models, to lend more context and meaning to the activities described above.
