Radar climatology of the COPS region

During the summer of 2007, the Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS) field campaign was conducted with the objective of obtaining improved understanding of convective processes and short-term quantitative precipitation forecasting in low-mountain regions. Comparisons were made between the radar climatology results and the COPS summer. The COPS summer exhibited preferential CI density in the mountainous regions but not as pronounced as the climatology.

The COPS summer had a similar diurnal peak of CI events as climatology but the ratio of daytime to nighttime CI (1.7), or amplitude of the diurnal cycle, was less than that of climatology (3.0). While both the 8-year climatology and COPS summer were dominated by daytime, locally-forced CI occurrences, the broad distribution of daytime CI events and increase in nighttime events observed during COPS indicate a more active synoptic pattern in 2007.