The MATERHORN: Unraveling the Intricacies of Mountain Weather

Emerging application areas such as air pollution in megacities, wind energy, urban security, and operation of unmanned aerial vehicles have intensified scientific and societal interest in mountain meteorology. To address scientific needs and help improve the prediction of mountain weather, the U.S. Department of Defense has funded a research effort—the Mountain Terrain Atmospheric Modeling and Observations (MATERHORN) Program—that draws the expertise of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, and multinational group of researchers. The program has four principal thrusts, encompassing modeling, experimental, technology, and parameterization components, directed at diagnosing model deficiencies and critical knowledge gaps, conducting experimental studies, and developing tools for model improvements. The access to the Granite Mountain Atmospheric Sciences Testbed of the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, as well as to a suite of conventional and novel high-end airborne and surface measurement platforms, has provided an unprecedented opportunity to investigate phenomena of time scales from a few seconds to a few days, covering spatial extents of tens of kilometers down to millimeters. This article provides an overview of the MATERHORN and a glimpse at its initial findings. Orographic forcing creates a multitude of time-dependent submesoscale phenomena that contribute to the variability of mountain weather at mesoscale. The nexus of predictions by mesoscale model ensembles and observations are described, identifying opportunities for further improvements in mountain weather forecasting.

Raw project data is available by contacting [e-mail]

随着诸如大城市空气污染、风能、城市安全和无人机操作等新兴应用领域的不断涌现，山地气象学在科学和社会层面引起了广泛的兴趣。为满足科学需求并协助提升山地天气预报的准确性，美国国防部资助了一项名为“山地地形大气模拟与观测”（MATERHORN）的研究项目，该项目汇聚了多学科、多机构以及跨国研究团队的专长。该计划涵盖四个主要研究方向，包括模型构建、实验研究、技术创新和参数化方法，旨在诊断模型缺陷和关键知识空白，开展实验研究，并开发改进模型的工具。美国陆军杜格韦试验场花岗岩山地大气科学试验台以及一系列传统和新型高端机载及地面测量平台的使用，为从几秒钟到几天的时间尺度，以及从数十公里到毫米级的空间尺度研究现象提供了前所未有的机会。本文概述了MATERHORN项目及其初步发现。地形强迫作用产生了众多依赖时间的亚中尺度现象，这些现象对中尺度山地天气的变率产生了贡献。文章描述了中尺度模型集合预测与观测之间的联系，并指出了在山地天气预报中进一步改进的机会。

原始项目数据可通过联系 [e-mail] 获取。