Accurate rainfall forecasts using numerical weather prediction (NWP) models can provide significant increases in forecast lead-time and thereby give greater opportunity for flood warning and protection measures. One goal of the FLOODRELIEF project is to quantify the uncertainty of forecast precipitation fields from two different NWP models (Eta and MM5) to investigate the impact of precipitatio...

A mesoscale model (MM5), a dispersive Langrangian particle model (FLEXPART), and intensive meteorological and COrrelation SPECtrometer (COSPEC) measurements from a field campaign are used to examine the advection and turbulent diffusion patterns associated with interactions and forcings between topography, synoptic atmospheric flows and thermally-driven circulations. This study describes the at...

On 21 July 2001 a number of severe storms developed over the region of Camaguey, Cuba, which were observed by radar. A numerical simulation was performed in order to realistically reproduce the development of the storms observed that day. The mesoscale model MM5 was used to determine the initial, boundary and update conditions for the storm-scale simulation with the model ARPS. Changes to the s...

Between the 11 and 13 October 2005 several flash floods were produced along the coast of Catalonia (NE Spain) due to a significant heavy rainfall event. Maximum rainfall achieved values up to 250 mm in 24 h. The total amount recorded during the event in some places was close to 350 mm. Barcelona city was also in the affected area where high rainfall intensities were registered, but just a few s...

Verification of two months, April and May 1997, of 48-h mesoscale model simulations of the atmospheric state around Greenland are presented. The simulations are performed with a modified version of The Pennsylvania State University–National Center for Atmospheric Research fifth-generation Mesoscale Model (MM5), referred to as the Polar MM5. Global atmospheric analyses as well as automatic weath...

The mesoscale numerical weather prediction model MM5, the 5 generation Pennsylvania State University/NCAR Mesoscale Model, uses a global land-use map to set the physical parameters on the surface characteristics to model the soil-atmosphere processes. These parameters are albedo, emissivity, thermal inertia, roughness length and soil moisture. A new estimation of soil parameters is done for the...

A physically based retrieval algorithm was developed to estimate snowfall over land. The retrieval algorithm relies on the MM5 model that generates the vertical structure of a snow cloud, including snow mass, snow particle effective diameter, and water vapor. The MM5 cloud simulation was used to provide statistics for generating the cloud characteristics. The snow cloud profile and surface emis...