A network of water vapor Raman lidars for improving heavy precipitation forecasting in southern France: introducing the WaLiNeAs initiative and first highlights from the 2022 field campaign
- 1CNRS, LATMOS, UMR 8190 CNRS, SU, UVSQ, Paris, France (cyrille.flamant@latmos.ipsl.fr)
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
Extreme heavy precipitation events (HPEs) pose a threat to human life but, despite regular improvement, remain difficult to predict because of the lack of adequate high frequency and high-resolution water vapor (WV) observations in the low troposphere (below 3 km). To fill this observational gap, The Water vapor Lidar Network Assimilation (WaLiNeAs) initiative aims at implementing an integrated prediction tool (IPT), coupling network measurements of WV profiles, and a numerical weather prediction system to try to improve the forecasts of the amount, timing, and location of rainfall associated with HPEs in southern France (struck by ~ 7 HPEs per year on average during the fall).
In the fall/winter of 2022-2023, a network of 6 mobile Raman WV lidars was specifically implemented in Southern France (Aude, Gard, Var and Bouche du Rhone) and in Corsica. The network was complemented by 2 fixed Raman WV lidars in Barcelona and Valencia with the aim to provide measurements with high vertical resolution and accuracy to be assimilated in the French Application of Research to Operations at Mesoscale (AROME-France) model, using a four-dimensional ensemble-variational approach with 15-min updates in addition to the observations operationally assimilated (radar, satellites, …). This innovative IPT is expected to enhance the model capability for kilometer-scale prediction of HPEs over southern France up to 48 h in advance.
The field campaign was conducted from October of 2022 to January 2023, to cover the period most propitious to heavy precipitation events in southern France. A consortium of French, German, Italian, and Spanish research groups operated the Raman WV lidar network
In this presentation, we will provide an overview of the precipitation events in southern France during the WaLiNeAs campaign, as well as an outline of the operations period of the different Raman WV lidars and the lidar data monitoring procedure implemented during the experiment. We will highlight the cases of interest and provide an outlook at next steps towards lidar data assimilation in AROME.
Cyrille Flamant1 · Patrick Chazette2 · Clotilde Augros3 · Pierre Brousseau3 · Paolo Di Girolamo4 ·Andreas Behrendt5 · Michaël Sicard6,7 · Julien Totems2 · Diego Lange5 ·Nadia Fourrié3 · Guillaume Thomas3 · Noemi Franco4 · Marco Dipaolantonio4,8 · Donato Summa4,9 ·Davide Dionisi9 · Adolfo Comerón6 · Pascal Genau1 · Frédéric Laly2,10 · Jérémy Lagarrigue2 · Constantino Munoz Porcar6 · Alejandro Rodriguez Gomez6 · José-Luis Gómez-Amo12 Pedro C. Valdelomar12 · Volker Wulfmeyer5 1LATMOS/IPSL, CNRS-SU-UVSQ, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France 2 LSCE/IPSL, CNRS-CEA-UVSQ, University Paris-Saclay, CEA Saclay, Gif sur Yvette, France 3 CNRM, Universite de Toulouse, Meteo-France, CNRS, Toulouse, France 4 Scuola Di Ingegneria, Universita Della Basilicata, Potenza, Italy 5 Institut Fur Physik Und Meteorologie, Universitat Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany 6 CommSensLab, Department of Signal Theory and Communications, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain 7 Institut D’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya, Ciencies I Tecnologies de L’Espai-Centre de Recerca de L’Aeronautica I de L’Espai, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), 08034 Barcelona, Spain 8 Institute of Marine Sciences (ISMAR), Italian National Research Council (CNR), Rome - Tor Vergata, 00133, 9 CNR-IMAA, Tito Scalo center, Potenza, Italy 10 ADDAIR Company, 78530, Buc, France 11 Division Technique de l'INSU, Meudon, France 12 Department of Earth Physics and Thermodynamics, University of Valencia, Spain
How to cite: Flamant, C. and the WaLiNeAs Team: A network of water vapor Raman lidars for improving heavy precipitation forecasting in southern France: introducing the WaLiNeAs initiative and first highlights from the 2022 field campaign, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-14747, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-14747, 2023.
