HR: 13:55h
AN: B33G-02    [Abstracts]
TI: Recent Results from the NCAR Water Cycle Program
AU: * Rasmussen, R
EM: rasmus@ucar.edu
AF: National Center for Atmospheric Research, Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80303 United States
AB: This paper will report on the goals and some recent accomplishments of the NCAR Water Cycle Across Scales Program. The goal of this program is to understand how water vapor, precipitation, and land- surface hydrology interact across scales to define the hydrological cycle, and to use this information to improve both large and small scale weather prediction, climate models, and surface-hydrologic forecasting. The particular aspects of the water cycle that we have chosen to emphasize were determined based on an assessment of the research needs and in consideration of NCARs relative strengths in observations, modeling and analysis. In order to have a manageable size of the research effort, we also decided to focus the first phase of this initiative on diurnal cycle water cycle over the continental North America during the warm season. Four main thrusts have been developed: 1. Diagnostic Analysis of Precipitation on a Continental Scale, The goal of this research is to examine the diurnal cycle of precipitation from observations and document the intensity, frequency, and amount of precipitation. The observed diurnal cycle will be compared to the climate and weather model prediction of the diurnal cycle, and areas needing improvement identified. 2. Cloud System Simulation, Research will focus on understanding relationships between precipitation and the multi-scale organization of convection in regard to the atmospheric component of the water cycle. Cloud- resolving models having large domains will be used extensively. Results from the numerical simulations will be used to evaluate and improve convective parameterization and cloud-microphysical parameterization. Studies will include key aspects such as the diurnal cycle of precipitation and the role of organized cloud systems. Verification data will be obtained from the IHOP_2002 field experiment analysis and other relevant sources. 3. Water vapor and Warm Season Convection, and The main thrust of this effort is the IHOP field program on water vapor and convective initiation and the analysis of the resulting data. Scientist goals are to better understand the variability of water vapor in the atmosphere and its role in convective initiation and the water cycle. 4. Land- Atmosphere Interaction. The objectives here are aimed at improving our knowledge of land-surface processes and their role in initiating and modulating convection. We will focus our efforts on an analysis of the surface sensor array data from the IHOP field program.
DE: 0315 Biosphere/atmosphere interactions (0426, 1610)
DE: 0414 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling (0412, 0793, 1615, 4805, 4912)
DE: 1615 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling (0412, 0414, 0793, 4805, 4912)
DE: 1631 Land/atmosphere interactions (1218, 1843, 3322)
DE: 1836 Hydrological cycles and budgets (1218, 1655)
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005