Satellite- and radar-based investigations of heavy precipitation systems on the southern side of the European Alps

Summary In autumn 1999 during the field phase of the Mesoscale Alpine Programme (MAP), the geostationary satellite Meteosat-6 performed 5-minute rapid scan imagery over central Europe. The rapid scan data of 11 heavy precipitation events are investigated by analyzing the spatial and temporal characteristics of cloud top structures. The objectives are to separate convective from stratiform cloud regions by satellite data alone and to gain insight into the life cycle of heavy precipitation systems. For verification of the satellite-based results, radar data from the operational Mt. Lema C-band radar is interpolated on the spatial grid of the infrared and visible Meteosat images. The interpolated radar data of each single grid cell is then classified by a convective-stratiform algorithm and compared to the analysed rapid scan imagery.The satellite- and radar-based approaches do only rarely produce matching classifications concerning the identification of convective areas. Since convection during the field phase of MAP occurred mostly embedded within stratiform cloud regions, no temporal and spatial characteristics of convective activity within clouds can be systematically derived from satellite imagery. This lack of characteristic cloud top structures prevented the unambiguous identification of typical cloudiness associated with stratiform precipitation. It is one of the major findings of this study, that in several cases being classified as stratiform by radar, strong cloud development is observed in satellite imagery. The preferred area of strong cloud development is located ahead of the Alpine barrier in a precipitation-free atmosphere. Two contrasting examples of life cycles of heavy precipitation systems are given based on the complementary information extracted from satellite and radar data.