Technical meeting on Himawari-8/9 Rapidly Developing Cumulus Area (RDCA) products
A technical meeting on Himawari-8/9 Rapidly Developing Cumulus Area (RDCA) products was held online by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) on 18 March 2025, as a follow-up to a similar event in March 2024. This was part of activities conducted under the Annual Operating Plan (AOP) 2024 - item 7 "Enhancing Utilization of Himawari 8/9 Products" of the Working Group on Meteorology (WGM) of the ESCAP/WMO Typhoon Committee (TC), which was endorsed at the 56th session of TC held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 27 February to 1 March 2024. Attendees included representatives from National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) in Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The project aims to enhance NMHSs' utilization of observation data from the Himawari-8/9 geostationary meteorological satellites by developing RDCA detection techniques based on such data. Discussions at the meeting covered recent activities/challenges relating to RDCA development and future work in the field.
