WesCon/WOEST The Wessex Convection Experiment 2023

Forecasting convection is a key problem in the UK and improving the model forecasts available for meteorologists is a priority. The “Wessex Convection experiment” (WesCon) which ran alongside the NERC funded project “WesCon – Observing the Evolving Structures of Turbulence” (WOEST) took place for three months (Jun-Aug) in the summer of 2023. This campaign sought to provide observations of convective clouds/storms to develop both existing and new modelling systems. In this talk I will describe the motivation and areas of emphasis for WesCon/WOEST in terms of deficiencies in current models and ongoing work to develop new, higher resolution, systems. I will describe the observational facilities deployed, summarise the campaign and highlight some interesting cases and preliminary results. I will also discuss the research models ran for the campaign both in real time and afterwards. Finally follow on work will be discussed when the dataset is being used to improve the models by Met Office and NERC funded scientists as part of the joint ParaChute (“Parametrizing Convective [turbulence] at Hectometric [and larger] scales, and Understanding the Turbulent Environment”) programme.