Cascade was a NERC funded consortium project to study organized convection in the tropical atmosphere using large domain cloud system resolving model simulations.

Within the Cascade project a version of the Met Office Unified Model (UM) at horizontal resolutions of 1.5km - 40km was used Africa, Indian Ocean and West Pacific Ocean. The horizontal resolution allowed the individual cloud systems to simulate the large-scale organization. The combination of the high resolution and large domains allowed the upscale transports of heat, moisture and momentum and investigated the impact of these transports on the evolution of the synoptic and planetary scale systems.

Two domains of interest were chosen to represent continental and oceanic convection respectively. Simulations of the West African Monsoon region were used to understand the range of factors which influence the diurnal cycle of convection over complex topography and to identify the impact of the diurnal cycle and other mesoscale organization on the synoptic organization of convection by African Easterly Waves. Simulations of the Indian Ocean and West Pacific Warm Pool were used to investigate the role of mesoscale and synoptic scale organization on the evolution of the Madden-Julian Oscillation and the influence of the diurnal cycle (e.g. land-sea breeze circulations) on the maintenance of the climate of the Maritime Continent region. In addition, simulations over an idealized ocean surface were used to investigate the organization of convection by equatorially trapped wave modes.