The Program for Research on Elevated Convection with Intense Precipitation (PRECIP): An Overview

The Program for Research on Elevated Convection with Intense Precipitation (PRECIP) is examined, from origins to results.  Following the author’s early work on convective snowfall, the suggestion was made to broaden his scientific inquiry to the topic of elevated convection in more general terms.  This suggestion came from several quarters, but Ron Przybylinski was the one who stressed keeping any proposed work in the context of heavy precipitation.  Thus PRECIP was born, with the proposed work posing several testable hypotheses for evaluation:  1) Upright convection from the release of elevated PI is the dominant mode in elevated convection that produces heavy precipitation; 2) Elevated convection cells are more shallow, but longer lasting than convection rooted in the boundary layer; 3) Elevated PI results primarily from differential temperature advection.  The results of field deployments, analysis of the data collected, and evaluation of WRF model solutions will be discussed in this talk.