D-PHASE: Scientific Results

The WWRP Forecast Demonstration Project D-PHASE successfully demonstrated recent advances in forecasting heavy precipitation events and related floods in the Alpine region. Many of these advances have been initiated during the Mesoscale Alpine Programme (MAP).

From a Forecast Demonstration Project (FDP) perspective, D-PHASE has successfully set-up a distributed real-time end-to-end forecasting system, including 7 ensemble and 23 deterministic atmospheric models, 7 coupled hydrological models, various nowcasting tools as well as a centralised Visualisation Platform and a centralised Data Archive. It actively involved 45 end user institutions, most of which provided a (very) positive feedback on the usefulness of the system. In Switzerland, the success of the D-PHASE FDP with the end users was so distinct that the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment is financing the experimental continuation of the D-PHASE Visualisation Platform (with a reduced number of participating models and nowcasting tools) until a new operational warning platform is providing the full functionality of the D-PHASE Visualisation Platform, a possibly unsurpassable achievement for a Forecast Demonstration Project.

On the other hand, D-PHASE has produced an unprecedented data set that brings together results from more than 30 (real-time as well as hind-cast) atmospheric modelling systems on a common domain, with a common output format, joint warning procedures, and plots using the same coding (that can be compared without adaptation). At the same time hydrological runoff simulations were performed in over 40 catchments all over the Alps. The collaboration with the WWRP Research and Development Project COPS furthermore brought a unique opportunity to have high-quality observational data in a sub-domain and sub-period of the D-PHASE Operations Period (Wulfmeyer et al. 2008).

The available data set will allow to
– systematically demonstrate the additional value of convection permitting high-resolution atmospheric modelling;
– investigate the properties and performance of EPSs both for atmospheric and hydrological models;
– study predictability of convection processes and convective initiation using the present model results in connection with the observational results of COPS;
– benchmark models of all types by comparing them with a range of other models of the same category, or even other model types;
– systematically evaluate nowcasting tools using the available data, and possibly extend their functionality by introducing model products;
– judge the end user feedback on its own grounds (and take the consequences), and compare it to the ‘objective’ verification results – thus learning even more concerning the improvement of the overall forecasting/warning system.

 

Contact:

For further information, please contact: Marco Arpagaus, Mathias Rotach.