The influence of mountain-valley breeze circulations on the formation and maintenance of dry lids in the COPS region
Résumé
The Convective and Orographically-Induced Precipita-tion Study (COPS) is an international field campaign which took place during the summer of 2007 over the Vosges, the Rhine Valley and the Black-Forest (Figure 1). The aim of this intensive observation campaign was to study various phases of convection and con-vective environment and improve quantitative precipi-tation forecasts (Wulfmeyer et al in [3]). An analysis of water-vapor profiles shows the existence of tropo-spheric dry air layers for several days. These dry air layers, also known as lids, are hypothesized to play an important role in the inhibition and the initiation of con-vection over the COPS region. Sometimes, these lay-ers are very thin and require instruments with a good vertical resolution to be observed, such as radiosound-ings or Lidar profilers.