01/01/2011  - Today

CEMADEN (Centro Nacional de Monitoramento e Alertas de Desastres Naturais)

Cachoeira Paulista - BRAZIL

Consultant Remote Sensing / Meteorology, UNESCO-Brazil

• I am currently working at the research division of CEMADEN, an operational center of Brazil, which aims to monitor and forecast extreme events and natural disasters over the entire South American continent. 
  
  • Development of a system to detect, track and nowcast tropical storms in real-time by using infrared data from geostationary satellites and ground weather radars. 
  - Short-term forecasting of the tropical storm sizes, intensities and displacements up to three hours ahead.
  - Evaluation and validation of the new nowcast algorithm by comparing its results with those of existing algorithms.
  
  
  • Operationalization of the nowcasting algorithm at the operational division of CEMADEN for real-time treatments.
  • Tests of the algorithm in the IDL language and developments in a low-level language (C).

   

01/01/2011  - 31/11/2011

Laboratoire de Météorologie dynamique (LMD)

CNRS/ Ecole Polytechnique (Palaiseau)

Post-Doctorate

Study of the contribution of the tropical convective systems type, size, intensity to the tropical rainfall for several study regions of the tropical belt

• Combined analysis of a 1°/1day surface accumulated rainfall product with a cloud-tracking algorithm.
• Classification of the tropical convective systems with their propagation speed, size, brightness temperature, lifetime criteria.
• Analysis of regional variability of the various convective system classes contributions to seasonal accumulated rainfall.

01/10/2007  - 31/12/2010

Laboratoire de Météorologie dynamique (LMD)

CNES/CNRS/ Ecole Polytechnique (Palaiseau)

Phd student

Life cycle of monsoonal convective systems over the inter-tropical belt: preparation to the Megha-Tropiques mission

• Development of a new generation cloud-tracking algorithm of tropical thunderstorms called TOOCAN (Tracking Of Organized Convection Algorithm through a 3 dimensional segmentatioN).
  • Implementation of an image-processing technique based on a 3-dimensional segmentation of geostationary infrared images to detect and track tropical thunderstorms.
  • Improvement of the characterization of the cold cloud shield associated to tropical thunderstorms along their life cycles.

• Elaboration of a satellite level-3 product called “Mesoscale Convective Systems Composite”.
  • Collocation in space and time of the precipitating estimates derived from microwave instruments with the tropical storms identified by the TOOCAN algorithm.
  • Computation of the average rain intensity associated to convective systems along their life cycle.
  • Production oftechnical documents such as a Data Product Catalogue (DPC) describing how the processing codes work.
  • Interaction with engineers based in the operational data centre of the French space agency CNES to operationalize the scientific algorithm.
  • Run of the algorithm on all available geostationary platforms to monitor the whole tropical belt.

• Analysis of the temporal evolution of the cold cloud shield and precipitation associated to tropical storms along their life cycles for several monsoonal seasons over West Africa, India and the adjacent oceans.

• Management of a computer engineer to convert the original IDL codes of the TOOCAN algorithm to a low-level programming language (C) for an operational treatment.
• Supervision of a master’s Degree internship to analyze the sampling of tropical storms using several microwave platforms in the framework of the Global Precipitation Mission Measurement (GPM).

01/09/2005  - 01/10/2007

Laboratoire de Météorologie dynamique (LMD)

CNES/CNRS/école polytechnique (Palaiseau)

Ingénieur d’étude CNRS (equivalent to associate scientist)

Preparation of the Megha-Tropiques mission

• Exploitation and operationalizationof a classical cloud-tracking algorithm based on an overlapping technique to detect and track convective systems by using the METEOSAT first and second generation data.
• Elaboration and validation of a climatology of monsoonal convective systems from the METEOSAT observation over the West African region for the period 1983-2006.
• Investigation of the relationship between the variability of the monsoonal convective systems with seasonal rainfall at the interannual scale using the GPCP data (Global Precipitation Climatology Project).
• Development of an orbitography simulator to analyze the sampling of the monsoonal convective systems by the 3 instruments onboard the low earth orbit satellite Megha-Tropiques.
• Programming in IDL, FORTRAN and C languages.

Contribution to the AMMA (African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses) project

• Operational maintenance of the AMMA operational centre website.
• Development of the website in PhP script.
• Implementation of a near real time product performing a computation of the Free Tropospheric Humidity from geostationary data.

01/09/2003 - 31/12/2004

 Celar /DGA (Rennes)

Image processing engineer– Apprenticeship contract

NATO’s project:

Improvement of the Infrared Counter-Measures embedded in aircrafts to protect them against new types of Infrared guided missiles

• Developments of robust image-processing methods to be implemented on Infrared seeker head onboard missiles to guide them on an aircraft target.
• Tests and validations of the image processing developments with the Matlab environment.
• Programming in language C and implementation in a simulation software called Fly-In 2000.

2002 - 2004           

Master’s degree in signal processing

2003 - 2004

DESS d’Imagerie Electronique (Image Processing) - mention AB - (Paris VI) - Specialisation in biological and medical imaging processing

2002 - 2003

Maîtrise EEA (Electronics -  Electrotechnics -  Automatisms) - mention AB - (Rennes I)  - Specialisation in signal processing

1999 – 2002           

Bachelor of science degree in automatism electronics

2001 – 2002

Licence EEA (Electronics - Electrotechnics - Automatisms) - mention AB -  (Rennes I)

1999 – 2001

DEUG STPI (Science des techniques pour l’ingénieur) (Rennes I)

Computer skills

Languages

C/C++, Visual C++, Fortran 77/90, Eiffel, Pascal, Matlab/ Simulink, IDL, ferret, csh, sh, html, php

Systems          

UNIX / LINUX, Windows 95/98/2000/XP

Software package

Photoshop, ImageJ, 3dsmax, Excel, Word, StarOffice

Language skills

French

Native language

English

Upper-intermediate level

German          

Basic knowledge

Rémy Roca

(PhD supervisor)

Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique / IPSL

UPMC-Jussieu, T45-55, 3eme, Boite 99       

4, place Jussieu, 75252 PARIS Cedex 05 

e-mail : remy.roca(at)lmd.jussieu.fr

Papers published

• Roca R., J-C Bergès, H. Brogniez, M. Capderou, P. Chambon P, O. Chomette, S. Cloché, T. Fiolleau, I. Jobard, J. Lémond , M. Ly, L. Picon, P. Raberanto, A. Szantai and M. Viollier,2009; On the water and energy cycle in the Tropics, Comptes Rendus Géosciences
• Fiolleau.Tand Roca.R; A new Approach to the Detection and Tracking of Mesoscale Convective Systems in the Tropics, Proceedings of the 2009 EUMETSAT Meteorological Satellite Conference, 2009 EUMETSAT METEOROLOGICAL SATELLITE CONFERENCE, Bath, United Kingdom 21 – 25 September 2009, EUMETSAT P.55, ISBN 978-92-9110-086-6,ISSN 1011-3932
• Fiolleau.Tand Roca.R; Further investigation on the TOOCAN algorithm to detect and track convective systems in the tropics. Proceedings of the IWW. February 22 - 26, 2010 Tokyo, Japan
• Fiolleauet al; A climatology of Mesoscale Convective Systems from 23-years of METEOSAT first generation observations; article to be submitted
• Fiolleau Tand R. Roca; Composites of tropical systems life cycle using a merging methodology of geostationary with low earth orbit satellites data; article to be submitted
• Fiolleau.T, Roca.R; A methodology for the detection and tracking of mesoscale convective systems in the tropics; article to be submitted

Conferences

• Fiolleau.T, Roca.R, Grandpeix.JY, Yu.J; Analysis of deep convection initiation over West Africa from METEOSAT infrared data, second international AMMA conference, Karlsruhe, 26-30 November 2007
• Fiolleau.T, Tomasini.M, Lafore.JP, Laurent.H, Lebel.T, Ramage.K and Roca.R; A climatology of Mesoscale Convective Systems from 23-years of METEOSAT first generation observations, Karlsruhe, 26-30 November 2007
• Fiolleau.T, Roca.R, Viltard.N, Labetoulle.S; Composite Life Cycle of Monsoonal Convective Systems using TRMM and Meteosat Observations, Third International TRMM Science Conference, Las Vegas, NV, February 4-8
• Fiolleauet al, A climatology of Mesoscale Convective Systems from 23-years of METEOSAT first generation observations, AMMA conference, november 26,30 2009
• Fiolleau.T, Roca.R; Mesoscale Convective System life cycle characteristics from METEOSAT and TRMM Observations over the Indian Monsoon region. International conference on Megha-Tropiques Science and Applications, Bangalore, India, 23-25 March 2009.
• Fiolleau.T, Tomasini.M, Roca.R, Lafore.JP, Laurent.H, Lebel.T, and Ramage.K; Summertime Climatology of Mesoscale Convective Systems over West Africa from 24-years of METEOSAT observations. EGU General Assembly,Vienna, Austria, 19-24 April 2009.
• Fiolleau.T, Roca.R; A new Approach to the Detection and Tracking of Mesoscale Convective Systems in the Tropics, EUMETSAT Meteorological Satellite Conference, Bath, England, 21st -25th September 2009
• Fiolleau.T, Roca.R; Nouvelle approche de détection et de suivi des Systèmes Convectifs dans les tropiques. Colloque Les Satellites Grand Champ, Clermont Ferrand, France, 21-23 January 2010
• Fiolleau.T, Roca.R; A new Approach to the Detection and Tracking of Mesoscale Convective Systems in the Tropics using MSG, Tenth International Winds Workshop. February 22 - 26, 2010 Tokyo, Japan
• Fiolleau.T, Roca.R; The TOOCAN algorithm: A new method for the detection and tracking of mesoscale convective systems in the tropics. Colloque tropiquesJune 1- 3, 2010, Toulouse.
• Fiolleau.T, Roca.R; Convective Systems life cycle characteristics from METEOSAT and TRMM over the monsoonal regions.EGU General Assembly, Vienna, Austria, 03-08 April 2011.