As an ICTP Postgraduate Diploma student, Angela Cheska Siongco already had her head in the clouds. A 2012 graduate of the Programme, Siongco excelled at analysing climate through the use of ICTP's regional climate model to work on cloud convection parameterization--representing clouds in climate models and resolving their effects on other parts of the climate.
Now a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology's Clouds and Convection group in Hamburg, Germany, Siongco has recently published her latest research in the journal Climate Dynamics. Siongco and two collaborators looked at how the Atlantic Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ)--where trade winds from the northern and southern hemisphere meet--is captured in 22 atmospheric models. They discovered that the models' representation of precipitation in the zone does not match observed precipitation distribution, with some placing the rain too far west and others placing it too far east of the observed central Atlantic distribution. They conclude that, among other reasons, the Atlantic ITCZ structure in the models is strongly influenced by the seasonal cycle of precipitation along the coasts of Brazil and the Gulf of Guinea.
