MESOCLIM - Mesoscale Alpine Climatology

The development of methods for a climatological evaluation of spatio-temporal high-resolution analyses of meteorological parameters represents an important task of basic research and furthermore offers a broad spectrum of applications. In the framework of the project VERACLIM, the high resolution analysis tool VERA which has been developed at the Department of Meteorology and Geophysics of the University of Vienna, has been used to evaluate mesoscale phenomena in the Alpine region climatologically by analyzing high resolution synoptic data. This produced a number of - partially new - results. A problem that had to be faced within VERACLIM was the huge number of missing data in the MARS and ERA40 archives of ECMWF in the time period of interest. Thus, even a combination of both archives allowed a comprehensive analysis of 22 years only. Within the applied project MESOCLIM, these results are to be extended and improved. The originally used synoptic data set should be enlarged to a 30-year climate normal period, which would improve the quality and significance of our results substantially. After establishing a comprehensive data archive, an upgraded and improved version of the VERA analysis method which is based on an adapted thin-plate-spline variational algorithm, will be used to produce three- and four- dimensional analyses of meteorological parameters over complex topography. The spatial resolution can be improved up to 1 km from the current 20 km, and the investigated domain can be chosen arbitrarily. Moreover, it is planned to develop so called "fingerprints" for precipitation and wind analyses for downscaling purposes, which will lead to a further improve the quality of the analyses. The results which can be expected in the framework of MESOCLIM would not only represent an important contribution for the basic research concerning mesoscale phenomena in mountainous terrain, but they would also offer a broad range of applications.

The development of methods for a climatological evaluation of spatio-temporal high-resolution analyses of meteorological parameters represents an important task of basic research and furthermore offers a broad spectrum of applications. In the framework of the project VERACLIM, the high resolution analysis tool VERA which has been developed at the Department of Meteorology and Geophysics of the University of Vienna, has been used to evaluate mesoscale phenomena in the Alpine region climatologically by analyzing high resolution synoptic data. This produced a number of - partially new - results. A problem that had to be faced within VERACLIM was the huge number of missing data in the MARS and ERA40 archives of ECMWF in the time period of interest. Thus, even a combination of both archives allowed a comprehensive analysis of 22 years only. Within the applied project MESOCLIM, these results are to be extended and improved. The originally used synoptic data set should be enlarged to a 30-year climate normal period, which would improve the quality and significance of our results substantially. After establishing a comprehensive data archive, an upgraded and improved version of the VERA analysis method which is based on an adapted thin-plate-spline variational algorithm, will be used to produce three- and four- dimensional analyses of meteorological parameters over complex topography. The spatial resolution can be improved up to 1 km from the current 20 km, and the investigated domain can be chosen arbitrarily. Moreover, it is planned to develop so called "fingerprints" for precipitation and wind analyses for downscaling purposes, which will lead to a further improve the quality of the analyses. The results which can be expected in the framework of MESOCLIM would not only represent an important contribution for the basic research concerning mesoscale phenomena in mountainous terrain, but they would also offer a broad range of applications.