An examination of atmospheric lids during COPS

Abstract

The understanding of the nature, origin and prevalence of atmospheric lids is low. There is, therefore, an opportunity to contribute significantly to this area of meteorology - this is the goal of this work. The context for this paper is the Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS). The COPS observational campaign, which was undertaken in 2007, was based around the Black Forest region with the aim of improving precipitation forecasts in low mountainous regions. However, the project also represents a great data archive with which to analyse isolated features, such as atmospheric lids. In short, lids play a vital role in the development of convective storms. For example, evidence from the Convective Storm Initiation Project (CSIP), which was run in the UK in 2005, has shown that lids are important not only in determining whether a storm occurs but also when and where they develop and how intense they are – sometimes, counterintuitively, they appear to increase the intensity. This extended abstract is intended as a brief overview of the previous literature on lids in order to place the work presented at ICAM-2009 in the wider scientific context.