The van den Heever Group
Convective Storms
Microphysics and Aerosols
Cold Pools
INCUS
Drones
RAMS Model
tobac
Research News
Convective Environment Variability
IT led a Geophysical Research Letters paper analyzing the spatial variability of quantities such as temperature and moisture in convective environments. Near-surface variability is higher over land than over oceans, but the opposite is true for variability at 500 mb.
Cold Pools and Deforestation
Nick led a paper in Atmospheric Science Letters investigating the impacts of deforestation and cold pools on convection in the Amazon Rainforest. Deforestation creates regions devoid of rainfall, but cold pools act to reduce the size of such regions.
BioAerosols and Cold Pools
Members of the Stone, Kreidenweis, and van den Heever groups recently published key results from the BioAerosols and Convective Storms (BACS) field campaign in Environmental Science: Atmospheres. Cold pools were found to significantly increase the concentration of warm-temperature biological INPs.
Group News
2026
May 14: The CORRIDOR project begins with students from the van den Heever group launching a sounding. For more information about CORRIDOR, and to view all sounding data, visit the CORRIDOR Webpage.
May 7: The group is featured in two SOURCE articles about using drones in atmospheric science. Christine, Nick, and Leah talk about their work in this article about using drones to sample cold pools aboard the METEOR research vessel in the Atlantic Ocean. They also shared 10 interesting details about working with weather drones in a second article here.
May 7: Charles wins the Silva Dias Award for his exceptional research on bioaerosol transport in convective storms. The Silva Dias Award is bestowed on a senior Ph.D. student in the Department of Atmospheric Science for outstanding research. Congrats to Charles for his well-deserved award!
May 6: Steve wins the CSU College of Engineering Outstanding Researcher Award for pioneering advances in high-resolution atmospheric modeling, foundational contributions to the NASA INCUS mission, leadership of DoE model intercomparison initiatives, success in securing major NASA and DoE funding, and exceptional mentorship in advanced modeling. Congratulations, Steve!
May 4: Check out these amazing interviews of Sue by Colorado Public Radio, Colorado Matters, The World, and GBH. In these interviews, Sue talks about the recently released PBS NOVA episode Rain Bombs which features the van den Heever group's field work.
May 4: Jennie presents INCUS research at the European Geophysical Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, Austria. Jennie gave a talk on the INCUS modeling efforts and also presented her work on ice aggregation in thunderstorm anvils.
April 16: Tune into PBS this Wednesday night (the 22nd) for Rain Bombs, a NOVA documentary featuring the van den Heever group's field work. See this SOURCE article for information on how to view the episode.
April 11: Brenda and Christine participate in April's Breakfast Fly-In for the Wings over the Rockies Exploration of Flight museum! They showcase drones and our innovative instrumentation strategy to aviation enthusiasts of all ages and discuss how drones, radars, and targeted airplane flights help us study high-impact weather phenomena such as cold pools, convective storms, and hurricanes.
April 8: Professor Kristen Rasmussen and Brenda were featured in a 9News story describing the INCUS mission and the ground-based data collection in Northern Colorado that was part of the TIME SLICE pre-launch field campaign. They talked about the mission and new radar techniques needed for validating INCUS in front of the backdrop of the CSU CHIVO radar, a key asset for INCUS Calibration and Validation.
March 13: The CSU Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering makes a LinkedIn post about Sue's leadership of the INCUS mission as a part of their Women's History Month celebration.
March 9 - March 12: Sue and Leah both gave invited keynote presentations about INCUS and cold pools at the 5th Workshop on Convective Organization (WCO5) in São José dos Campos, Brazil.
February 26: SOURCE publishes an article about the Testing INCUS Methods Experiment — Suborbital preLaunch Investigations of Convective Evolution (TIME–SLICE) field campaigns. TIME-SLICE serves as a key part of the calibration and validation effort for the INCUS mission. The INCUS team has tested, developed, and refined observational and strategies during TIME-SLICE. These strategies will be put to use during a post-launch calibration and validation field campaign.