Radar climatology of the COPS region

A climatology of convection initiation (CI) and convective enhancements (CE) has been developed using radar reflectivity data in southwestern Germany and eastern France over the period of May–August of 2000–2006 and 2008. The study region included the Vosges Mountains of France, the Rhine Valley which straddles France and Germany, the Black Forest Mountains and the Swabian Mountains of Germany. Convection occurred frequently during the summer months throughout the study region. The CI density (number of initiations per square km) illustrates preferential formation in the mountain regions while the CE events spanned both mountains and valleys nearly equally. There is a strong mid-day peak of the CI events suggesting that diurnal heating is critical for CI in the region. The very strong thunderstorms (>46 dBZ) first occurred in the mountains and ∼2 h later in the Rhine Valley. During the summer of 2007, the Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS) field campaign was conducted with the objective of obtaining improved understanding of convective processes and short-term quantitative precipitation forecasting in low-mountain regions. Comparisons were made between the radar climatology results and the COPS summer. The COPS summer exhibited preferential CI density in the mountainous regions but not as pronounced as the climatology. The COPS summer had a similar diurnal peak of CI events as climatology but the ratio of daytime to nighttime CI (1.7), or amplitude of the diurnal cycle, was less than that of climatology (3.0). While both the 8-year climatology and COPS summer were dominated by daytime, locally-forced CI occurrences, the broad distribution of daytime CI events and increase in nighttime events observed during COPS indicate a more active synoptic pattern in 2007.