S. Khodayar

The Convective Storm Initiation Project

The Convective Storm Initiation Project (CSIP) is an international project to understand precisely where, when, and how convective clouds form and develop into showers in the mainly maritime environment of southern England. A major aim of CSIP is to compare the results of the very high resolution Met Office weather forecasting model with detailed observations of the early stages of convective clouds and to use the newly gained understanding to improve the predictions of the model. A large array of ground-based instruments plus two instrumented aircraft, from the U.K. National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) and the German Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK), Karlsruhe, were deployed in southern England, over an area centered on the meteorological radars at Chilbolton, during the summers of 2004 and 2005. In addition to a variety ofground-based remote-sensing instruments, numerous rawinsondes were released at one- to two-hourly intervals from six closely spaced sites. The Met Office weather radar network and Meteosat satellite imagery were used to provide context for the observations made by the instruments deployed during CSIP. This article presents an overview of the CSIP field campaign and examples from CSIP of the types of convective initiation phenomena that are typical in the United Kingdom. It shows the way in which certain kinds of observational data are able to reveal these phenomena and gives an explanation of how the analyses of data from the field campaign will be used in the development of an improved very high resolution NWP model for operational use.

KITcube - a mobile observation platform for convection studies deployed during HyMeX

With the increase of spatial resolution of weather forecast models to order O(1 km), the need for adequate observations for model validation becomes evident. Therefore, we designed and constructed the ‘‘KITcube’’, a mobile observation platform for convection studies of processes on the meso-c scale. The KITcube consists of in-situ and remote sensing systems which allow measuring the energy balance components of the Earth’s surface at different sites; the mean atmospheric conditions by radiosondes, GPS station, and a microwave radiometer; the turbulent characteristics by a sodar and wind lidars; and cloud and precipitation properties by use of a cloud radar, a micro rain radar, disdrometers, rain gauges, and an X-band rain radar. The KITcube was deployed fully for the first time on the French island of Corsica during the HyMeX (Hydrological cycle in the Mediterranean eXperiment) field campaign in 2012. In this article, the components of KITcube and its implementation on the island are described. Moreover, results from one of the HyMeX intensive observation periods are presented to show the capabilities of KITcube.

High-resolution representation of the mechanisms responsible for the initiation of isolated thunderstorms over flat and complex terrains: analysis of CSIP and COPS cases

Two important measurement campaigns took place in Europe in the last years, the Convective Storm Initiation Project (CSIP) and the Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS) to gain a better understanding of why deep convection develops. In both campaigns, a dense network of instruments was deployed for detailed observation of the boundary layer characteristics. This paper investigates the usefulness of the combination of high-resolution surface, GPS, and radiosonde measurements to ascertain the likelihood of deep convection in particular for the complex terrain of the COPS domain. Two convection episodes were analysed for this purpose, one from the CSIP campaign and one from the COPS experiment. This study shows that despite the high spatial resolution of the radiosonde network in comparison to current observations, it was necessary to ascertain higher-resolution data sets illustrating the spatial variability of humidity, atmospheric stability, and convective inhibition. GPS and radiosonde data were used to determine high-resolution humidity fields, yielding high-resolution convection-related parameters’ fields representing atmospheric instability and inhibition in the area. The surface data provided a high-resolution representation of the near-surface convergence zones, which acted as triggering mechanism. The use of GPS measurements and surface stations, in addition to radiosonde measurements, turned out to be especially helpful to determine the regions of increased likelihood of deep convection.