Lander Ver Hoef

Keywords: Climate; Clouds; Convective clouds; Storm environments; Neural networks 1. Introduction Clouds play a crucial role in the Earth system. From a weather perspective, deep convective clouds organized as mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) produce a large fraction of global precipitation and much of the world’s severe storms and flooding, exerting a major influence on the larger-scale circulation (e.g., Hamilton et al. 1945; Fujita 1955; Houze 1977; Maddox 1980; Fritsch et al.