COPS

Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study

Intensive Observation Period of the Priority Program 1167 "Quantitative Precipitation Forecast" of the German Research Foundation (DFG)

A Research and Development Project within the World Weather Research Programme of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

COPS Special Issues and Overview Publications

Editorial of the COPS Special Issue 2013 giving an overview of the achievements and publications until 2013.

COPS Special Issue 2013 with 9 papers on COPS in Meteorologische Zeitschrift.


COPS Overview Paper 2011 giving an overview of the achievements and publications until 2011.

COPS Special Issue 2011 with 21 papers in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meterological Society.


COPS in BAMS 2008, an overview paper on COPS in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 2008.

PQP Special Issue 2008, a special issue on the DFG Priority Program "PQP" with several papers related to COPS in Meteorologische Zeitschrift.



This is the scientific webpage of the COPS project.

The COPS data can be downloaded at http://cera-www.dkrz.de/WDCC/ui/BrowseExperiments.jsp?proj=COPS.
For press information and public outreach, please visit the COPS Public Webpage at cops.uni-hohenheim.de (in German only).

The ARM Mobile Facility was operated in the COPS region from 1 April to 31 December 2007. Please follow this link for details: AMF Black Forest

For further links related to COPS are listed on the right.

Further Links:

Introduction

Project Location: Southern Germany & eastern France

Period: June - August 2007

When COPS was proposed, weather forecast models had not been successful in improving the Quantitative Precipitation Forecast for several years.
One reason for this stagnation was the lack of comprehensive, high-quality data sets usable for model validation as well as for data assimilation, thus leading to improved initial fields in numerical models. Theoretical analyses had identified the requirements measured data had to meet in order to close the gaps in process understanding. In previous field campaigns, it had already been shown that the latest generation of remote sensing systems had the potential to yield data sets of the required quality. It was therefore time to combine the most powerful remote sensing instruments with proven ground-based and airborne measurement techniques in an international field campaign which has been named COPS (Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study). Its goal was to serve as a backbone for the German Priority Program "Quantitative Precipitation Forecast" by producing the demanded data sets of unachieved accuracy and resolution. This required a sophisticated scientific preparation and a careful coordination between the efforts of the institutions involved. For the first time, the pre-convective environment, the formation of clouds and the onset and development of precipitation as well as its intensity have been observed in four dimensions simultaneously in a region of sufficient size. This has been achieved by combining COPS with international programs and by collaboration between leading scientists in Europe, US, and other countries. Thus, COPS was an opportunity for employing the newest generation of measurement systems such as scanning radar and lidar and has lead to a large number of scientific publications and thus supported recent advances in atmospheric sciences.