Emerging application areas such as air pollution in megacities, wind energy, urban security, and operation of unmanned aerial vehicles have intensified scientific and societal interest in mountain meteorology. To address scientific needs and help improve the prediction of mountain weather, the U.S. Department of Defense has funded a research effort—the Mountain Terrain Atmospheric Modeling and Observations (MATERHORN) Program—that draws the expertise of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, and multinational group of researchers. The program has four principal thrusts, encompassing modeling, experimental, technology, and parameterization components, directed at diagnosing model deficiencies and critical knowledge gaps, conducting experimental studies, and developing tools for model improvements. The access to the Granite Mountain Atmospheric Sciences Testbed of the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, as well as to a suite of conventional and novel high-end airborne and surface measurement platforms, has provided an unprecedented opportunity to investigate phenomena of time scales from a few seconds to a few days, covering spatial extents of tens of kilometers down to millimeters. This article provides an overview of the MATERHORN and a glimpse at its initial findings. Orographic forcing creates a multitude of time-dependent submesoscale phenomena that contribute to the variability of mountain weather at mesoscale. The nexus of predictions by mesoscale model ensembles and observations are described, identifying opportunities for further improvements in mountain weather forecasting.

Near-surface turbulence data from the Mountain Terrain Atmospheric Modeling and Observations (MATERHORN) program are used to study countergradient heat fluxes through the early evening transition. Two sites, subjected to similar large-scale forcing, but with vastly different surface and sub-surface characteristics, are considered. The Playa site is situated at the interior of a large dry lakebed desert with high sub-surface soil moisture, shallow water table, and devoid of vegetation. The Sagebrush site is located in a desert steppe region with sparse vegetation and little soil moisture. Countergradient sensible heat fluxes are observed during the transition at both sites. The transition process is both site and height dependent. At the Sagebrush site, the countergradient flux at 5 m and below occurs when the sign change of the sensible heat flux precedes the local temperature gradient sign change. For 10 m and above, the countergradient flux occurs when the sign change of the sensible heat flux follows the local temperature gradient sign change. At the Playa site, the countergradient flux at all tower levels occurs when the sign change of the sensible heat flux follows the local temperature gradient sign change. The phenomenon is explained in terms of the mean temperature and heat-flux evolution. The temperature gradient sign reversal is a top-down process while the flux reversal occurs nearly simultaneously at all heights. The differing countergradient behaviour is primarily due to the different subsurface thermal characteristics at the two sites. The combined high volumetric heat capacity and high thermal conductivity at the Playa site lead to small vertical temperature gradients that affect the relative magnitude of terms in the heat-flux tendency equation. A critical ratio of the gradient production to buoyant production of sensible heat flux is suggested so as to predict the countergradient behaviour.B Eric R. Pardyjak

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Data collected over an arid shallow slope (2-4 • ) during the Mountain Terrain Atmospheric Modeling and Observations (MATERHORN) Program are used to study the katabatic structure and onset of katabatic flow through the evening transition. An unprecedented suite of instrumentation, including a transect of five turbulence towers with 29 sonic anemometers, is used for the investigation. Fifteen transition periods with well-defined katabatic flow and relatively little synoptic forcing are used in the study. The katabatic onset, jet velocity and jet height all show a large degree of interdiurnal and intersite variance. The slope-aligned budgets of momentum and potential temperature are used to define time-scales that describe the evolution of the katabatic flow. Composite wind velocity time series are used to show that ≈30 min elapses from the time when the katabatic flow initializes at 0.5 m to the point of initialization at 20 m. A simple katabatic model utilizing surface energy-budget modelling is developed and used to model the interdiurnal katabatic variance. Finally, uni-and multi-variate statistical analyses are used to diagnose the influence of specific external variables. Valley wind speed, turbulence structure, soil moisture, and shadow front speed are all found to influence the katabatic dynamics to varying degrees.

Observations were taken on an east-facing sidewall at the foot of a desert mountain that borders a large valley, as part of the Mountain Terrain Atmospheric Modeling and Observations (MATERHORN) field program at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. A case study of nocturnal boundary layer development is presented for a night in mid-May when tethered-balloon measurements were taken to supplement other MATERHORN field measurements. The boundary layer development over the slope could be divided into three distinct phases during this night: 1) The evening transition from daytime upslope/up-valley winds to nighttime downslope winds was governed by the propagation of the shadow front. Because of the combination of complex topography at the site and the solar angle at this time of year, the shadow moved down the sidewall from approximately northwest to southeast, with the flow transition closely following the shadow front. 2) The flow transition was followed by a 3–4-h period of almost steady-state boundary layer conditions, with a shallow slope-parallel surface inversion and a pronounced downslope flow with a jet maximum located within the surface-based inversion. The shallow slope boundary layer was very sensitive to ambient flows, resulting in several small disturbances. 3) After approximately 2300 mountain standard time, the inversion that had formed over the adjacent valley repeatedly sloshed up the mountain sidewall, disturbing local downslope flows and causing rapid temperature drops.