Supplement to MAP D-PHASE: Real-Time Demonstration of Weather Forecast Quality in the Alpine Region: Additional Applications of the D-Phase Datasets

Rotach, Mathias W.; Ambrosetti, Paolo; Appenzeller, Christof; Arpagaus, M.; Fontannaz, Lionel; Fundel, Felix; Germann, Urs; Hering, Alessandro; Liniger, Mark A.; Stoll, Marco; Walser, André; Ament, Felix; Bauer, Hans‐Stefan; Behrendt, Andreas; Wulfmeyer, Volker; Bouttier, François; Seity, Yann; Buzzi, A.; Davolio, Silvio; Corazza, M.; Denhard, Michael; Dorninger, Manfred; Gorgas, T.; Frick, Jacqueline; Hegg, C.; Zappa, Massimiliano; Keil, Christian; Volkert, Hans; Marsigli, Chiara; Montaini, Andrea; McTaggart‐Cowan, Ron; Mylne, Ken; Ranzi, Roberto; Richard, Évelyne; Rossa, Andrea; Santos‐Muñoz, Daniel; Schär, Christoph; Staudinger, Michael; Yong, Wang; Werhahn, Johannes

doi:10.1175/2009bams2776.2

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 12 publications

(14 reference statements)

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“…Recent studies of weather forecast models (Rotach et al 2009a;Wulfmeyer et al 2011;Bauer et al 2011) and regional climate models (Feldmann et al 2008;Kendon et al 2012;Warrach-Sagi et al 2013) confirmed the improvement in model performance. Convection-permitting resolution optimizes the simulation of land surface exchange, surface heterogeneity, and orographic effects.…”

Section: A Overviewmentioning

confidence: 70%

The Impact of Plantations on Weather and Climate in Coastal Desert Regions

Wulfmeyer

Branch

Warrach‐Sagi

et al. 2014

Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

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Recent advances in technology permit the irrigation of dry, coastal areas, avoiding the use of fossil water and conflicts with other land use (e.g., for food production). Consequently, it becomes reasonable to consider large-scale plantations for mitigating increases in atmospheric concentrations by carbon sequestration and to study local modifications of weather and climate. This work investigates the impact of plantations in Oman and the Sonora Desert in Mexico assuming an area of about 100 km 3 100 km. For this purpose, an advanced land surface-atmosphere model was adapted to the local changes of land cover and operated on the convectionpermitting scale. Explicit simulations of the impact of the plantation on soil-vegetation-atmosphere feedback were performed for a duration of 1 yr. A strong modification of diurnal cycles of variables such as surface fluxes, temperature, and boundary layer depth was found. Over the plantations, the mean temperature decreased as a result of nonlinear changes of the diurnal cycle caused by less warming during the day than cooling during the night. Moreover, the plantations caused an increase in vertical instability and a modification of the horizontal flow leading to the development of convergence zones. During several isolated cases in summer, this process led to convection initiation and precipitation with an enhancement of about 30 mm in both areas, respectively. These convection-permitting simulations lend confidence that an increase in precipitation could be induced at the mesoscale by the introduction of vegetation in desert regions. Furthermore, this effect should be included in a quantitative assessment of climate engineering by afforestation.

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Section: A Overviewmentioning

confidence: 70%

The Impact of Plantations on Weather and Climate in Coastal Desert Regions

Wulfmeyer

Branch

Warrach‐Sagi

et al. 2014

Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology

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“…Quantitative precipitation forecasting in mountainous areas is of particular importance because depending on which river catchments are affected, convective systems may or may not lead to severe flooding events (Rotach et al, 2009a(Rotach et al, , 2009b. The field phase of the Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS) was performed in the summer of 2007 and was the first Research and Development Project of the World Weather Research Programme related to convective precipitation in a low-mountain region .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observation of convection initiation processes with a suite of state‐of‐the‐art research instruments during COPS IOP 8b

Behrendt

Pal

Aoshima

et al. 2011

Quart J Royal Meteoro Soc

107

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In the afternoon of 15 July 2007, a thunderstorm was initiated within a line of cumulus clouds which formed parallel to the crest of the Black Forest mountains during the Intensive Observation Period (IOP) 8b of the Convective and Orographicallyinduced Precipitation Study (COPS). This paper extends the analysis of processes that led to convection initiation (CI), i.e. the transition from shallow to deep convection, on this day with the data from several COPS instruments that have not been considered in previous studies. In particular, the boundary-layer structure, lids and the water-vapour field in the pre-convective environment of the event are discussed. For this purpose, we investigated measurements of water-vapour lidars, temperature lidars and wind lidars, profiles from radiosondes, in situ aircraft data and gridded data of weather stations as well as GPS integrated-water-vapour data and satellite imagery. Thermally driven circulation systems formed over both the Black Forest and the Vosges mountain ranges which resulted in local convergence zones. These superimposed with the large-scale convergence in the Black Forest area. In the presence of sufficient moisture and updraught, clouds formed close to the mountain crests. The related latent-heat release allowed larger thermals to be produced, which may have had a positive feedback on stabilizing these convergence zones as a whole. We believe that differences in the moisture field explain why convection remained shallow and sparse over the Vosges mountains because these differences were responsible for differences in convective inhibition (CIN). The stationary location of the convergence zone over the southern Black Forest was probably decisive for CI because it constantly transported sensible and latent heat into the area in which CI took place.

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“…However, in order to assess a suitable significant percentage to be applied to our instances, we experimented many alternatives. We started with the 33% threshold exceedance probability (at least 14 ensembles out of 40) derived from the Map D-Phase project outcomes [40,41], then we tried with 20% (8 out of 40) and 10% (4 out of 40). Results obtained for the 33% and 20%, for the sake of brevity not shown here, reveal that the unperturbed MOLOCH forecast is slightly preferable: most of the verification scores are similar but better, compared to those of the ST.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Deterministic to Probabilistic Forecasts: The ‘Shift-Target’ Approach in the Milan Urban Area (Northern Italy)

et al. 2018

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The number of natural catastrophes that affect people worldwide is increasing; among these, the hydro-meteorological events represent the worst scenario due to the thousands of deaths and huge damages to private and state ownership they can cause. To prevent this, besides various structural measures, many non-structural solutions, such as the implementation of flood warning systems, have been proposed in recent years. In this study, we suggest a low computational cost method to produce a probabilistic flood prediction system using a single forecast precipitation scenario perturbed via a spatial shift. In fact, it is well-known that accurate forecasts of heavy precipitation, especially associated with deep moist convection, are challenging due to uncertainties arising from the numerical weather prediction (NWP), and high sensitivity to misrepresentation of the initial atmospheric state. Inaccuracies in precipitation forecasts are partially due to spatial misplacing. To produce hydro-meteorological simulations and forecasts, we use a flood forecasting system which comprises the physically-based rainfall-runoff hydrological model FEST-WB developed by the Politecnico di Milano, and the MOLOCH meteorological model provided by the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (CNR-ISAC). The areas of study are the hydrological basins of the rivers Seveso, Olona, and Lambro located in the northern part of Milan city (northern Italy) where this system works every day in real-time. In this paper, we show the performance of reforecasts carried out between the years 2012 and 2015: in particular, we explore the 'Shift-Target' (ST) approach in order to obtain 40 ensemble members, which we assume equally likely, derived from the available deterministic precipitation forecast. Performances are shown through statistical indexes based on exceeding the threshold for different gauge stations over the three hydrological basins. Results highlight how the Shift-Target approach complements the deterministic MOLOCH-based flood forecast for warning purposes.

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Supplement to MAP D-PHASE: Real-Time Demonstration of Weather Forecast Quality in the Alpine Region: Additional Applications of the D-Phase Datasets

Cited by 10 publications

References 12 publications

The Impact of Plantations on Weather and Climate in Coastal Desert Regions

The Impact of Plantations on Weather and Climate in Coastal Desert Regions

Observation of convection initiation processes with a suite of state‐of‐the‐art research instruments during COPS IOP 8b

From Deterministic to Probabilistic Forecasts: The ‘Shift-Target’ Approach in the Milan Urban Area (Northern Italy)

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