International audienceThe Cévennes–Vivarais Mediterranean Hydrometeorological Observatory (OHM-CV) is a research initiative aimed at improving the understanding and modeling of the Mediterranean intense rain events that frequently result in devastating flash floods in southern France. A primary objective is to bring together the skills of meteorologists and hydrologists, modelers and instrumentalists, researchers and practitioners, to cope with these rather unpredictable events. In line with previously published flash-flood monographs, the present paper aims at documenting the 8–9 September 2002 catastrophic event, which resulted in 24 casualties and an economic damage evaluated at 1.2 billion euros (i.e., about 1 billion U.S. dollars) in the Gard region, France. A description of the synoptic meteorological situation is first given and shows that no particular precursor indicated the imminence of such an extreme event. Then, radar and rain gauge analyses are used to assess the magnitude of the rain event, which was particularly remarkable for its spatial extent with rain amounts greater than 200 mm in 24 h over 5500 km2. The maximum values of 600–700 mm observed locally are among the highest daily records in the region. The preliminary results of the postevent hydrological investigation show that the hydrologic response of the upstream watersheds of the Gard and Vidourle Rivers is consistent with the marked space–time structure of the rain event. It is noteworthy that peak specific discharges were very high over most of the affected areas (5–10 m3 s−1 km−2) and reached locally extraordinary values of more than 20 m3 s−1 km−2. A preliminary analysis indicates contrasting hydrological behaviors that seem to be related to geomorphological factors, notably the influence of karst in part of the region. An overview of the ongoing meteorological and hydrological research projects devoted to this case study within the OHM-CV is finally presented

This article is published with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.We perform simulations of several convective events over the southern UK with the Met Office Unified Model (UM) at horizontal grid lengths ranging from 1.5 km to 200 m. Comparing the simulated storms on these days with the Met Office rainfall radar network allows us to apply a statistical approach to evaluate the properties and evolution of the simulated storms over a range of conditions. Here we present results comparing the storm morphology in the model and reality which show that the simulated storms become smaller as grid length decreases and that the grid length that fits the observations best changes with the size of the observed cells. We investigate the sensitivity of storm morphology in the model to the mixing length used in the subgrid turbulence scheme. As the subgrid mixing length is decreased, the number of small storms with high area-averaged rain rates increases. We show that, by changing the mixing length, we can produce a lower-resolution simulation which produces similar morphologies to a higher-resolution simulation.

To study why, where, and when deep convection

The 3D structures of over 1,000 convective storms observed by the Chilbolton radar are used to constrain storm dynamics and microphysics in models with resolutions between 100 and 1,500 m.

(2015), Fractal geometry of aggregate snowflakes revealed by triple-wavelength radar measurements, Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, 176-183, doi:10.1002 Abstract Radar reflectivity measurements from three different wavelengths are used to retrieve information about the shape of aggregate snowflakes in deep stratiform ice clouds. Dual-wavelength ratios are calculated for different shape models and compared to observations at 3, 35, and 94 GHz. It is demonstrated that many scattering models, including spherical and spheroidal models, do not adequately describe the aggregate snowflakes that are observed. The observations are consistent with fractal aggregate geometries generated by a physically based aggregation model. It is demonstrated that the fractal dimension of large aggregates can be inferred directly from the radar data. Fractal dimensions close to 2 are retrieved, consistent with previous theoretical models and in situ observations.

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The Bollène-2002 Experiment was aimed at developing the use of a radar volume-scanning strategy for conducting radar rainfall estimations in the mountainous regions of France. A developmental radar processing system, called Traitements Régionalisés et Adaptatifs de Données Radar pour l'Hydrologie (Regionalized and Adaptive Radar Data Processing for Hydrological Applications), has been built and several algorithms were specifically produced as part of this project. These algorithms include 1) a clutter identification technique based on the pulse-to-pulse variability of reflectivity Z for noncoherent radar, 2) a coupled procedure for determining a rain partition between convective and widespread rainfall R and the associated normalized vertical profiles of reflectivity, and 3) a method for calculating reflectivity at ground level from reflectivities measured aloft. Several radar processing strategies, including nonadaptive, time-adaptive, and space-time-adaptive variants, have been implemented to assess the performance of these new algorithms. Reference rainfall data were derived from a careful analysis of rain gauge datasets furnished by the Cévennes-Vivarais Mediterranean Hydrometeorological Observatory. The assessment criteria for five intense and long-lasting Mediterranean rain events have proven that good quantitative precipitation estimates can be obtained from radar data alone within 100-km range by using well-sited, well-maintained radar systems and sophisticated, physically based data-processing systems. The basic requirements entail performing accurate electronic calibration and stability verification, determining the radar detection domain, achieving efficient clutter elimination, and capturing the vertical structure(s) of reflectivity for the target event. Radar performance was shown to depend on type of rainfall, with better results obtained with deep convective rain systems (Nash coefficients of roughly 0.90 for point radar-rain gauge comparisons at the event time step), as opposed to shallow convective and frontal rain systems (Nash coefficients in the 0.6-0.8 range). In comparison with time-adaptive strategies, the space-time-adaptive strategy yields a very significant reduction in the radar-rain gauge bias while the level of scatter remains basically unchanged. Because the Z-R relationships have not been optimized in this study, results are attributed to an improved processing of spatial variations in the vertical profile of reflectivity. The two main recommendations for future work consist of adapting the rain separation method for radar network operations and documenting Z-R relationships conditional on rainfall type.

A set of high-resolution radar observations of convective storms has been collected to evaluate such storms in the Met Office Unified Model during the Dynamical and Microphysical Evolution of Convective Storms (DYMECS) project. The 3-GHz Chilbolton Advanced Meteorological Radar was set up with a scan-scheduling algorithm to automatically track convective storms identified in real time from the operational rainfall radar network. More than 1000 storm observations gathered over 15 days in 2011 and 2012 are used to evaluate the model under various synoptic conditions supporting convection. In terms of the detailed three-dimensional morphology, storms in the 1500-m grid length simulations are shown to produce horizontal structures a factor of 1.5–2 wider compared to radar observations. A set of nested model runs at grid lengths down to 100 m show that the models converge in terms of storm width, but the storm structures in the simulations with the smallest grid lengths are too narrow and too intense compared to the radar observations. The modeled storms were surrounded by a region of drizzle without ice reflectivities above 0 dBZ aloft, which was related to the dominance of ice crystals and was improved by allowing only aggregates as an ice particle habit. Simulations with graupel outperformed the standard configuration for heavy-rain profiles, but the storm structures were a factor of 2 too wide and the convective cores 2 km too deep.