ARM Mobile Facility Completes Field Campaign in Germany

Published: 15 January 2008

Operations at the ARM Mobile Facility (AMF) site in Heselbach, Germany, officially came to a close on January 1, 2008. As one of several measurement “supersites” situated throughout the Black Forest region for the Convective and Orographically Induced Precipitation Study (COPS), the AMF obtained data continuously beginning in March 2007. Measurements obtained by the AMF during the field campaign encompassed the entire life cycle of precipitation—from pre-convective conditions to the development of clouds, followed by the onset, development, and organization of precipitation. The AMF site also hosted a number of guest instruments for supplemental field campaigns throughout the deployment. The combination of scientific expertise from the numerous participating countries, as well as collaboration among related international programs, provided a unique opportunity to obtain comprehensive, high-quality data sets usable for model validation as well as for data assimilation.

Based on observations of the development of clouds and precipitation from Saharan dust outbreaks that occurred several times during the COPS period, scientists have a unique opportunity to study aerosol-cloud-precipitation microphysics in great detail. They are also studying parameterizations of the atmospheric boundary layer, convection, and cloud microphysics with 4D synergetic observations, as well as the performance of an ensemble of convection permitting models, which can be evaluated in detail for the first time. Particularly, severe precipitation events, which led to flooding in Switzerland and southern Germany during COPS, will be the focus of ensuing research.