Clouds, precipitation, and organized convection are key processes of the atmosphere. They strongly interact with dynamic, thermodynamic, and aerosol conditions in the atmosphere, and are also coupled with land and ocean surface processes in the Earth system. In my presentation, I will overview our recent efforts on these topics, including:

• the pathway for land surface conditions to affect local afternoon rainfall;
• the evaluation of satellite precipitation products over coastal land versus ocean;
• conceptual understanding of land surface effect on shallow clouds at different elevations;
• the relationship between lower atmosphere stability and low-level clouds over global ocean;
• the precondition for the occurrence of organized convection over tropical ocean and land;
• a new satellite wind mission concept that combines wind lidar measurements with feature-tracking 3-D wind from water vapor sounding data

Xubin Zeng is the Agnese N. Haury Chair and professor at the University of Arizona, Founding Director of the Climate Dynamics and Hydrometeorolgy Center with 45 faculty members across five different colleges, and affiliated professor in Applied Mathematics, Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis, and Global Change Interdisciplinary Programs. He is a fellow of AMS, AAAS, and AGU.He received the National Science Foundation Special Creativity Award and the AMS Charles Franklin Brooks Award for Outstanding Service to the Society. He has held numerous leadership positions at national and international organizations, including currently co-chairing the Scientific Steering Group of GEWEX (a major international program on water and climate) and chairing the WCRP Global Precipitation Experiment Tiger Team. He is currently on sabbatical at JPL as a Distinguished Visiting Scientist.