The Demonstration Phase of MAP: D-Phase

The Mesoscale Alpine Programme (MAP) has seen three phases so far: a Development Phase when the plans were made and the project was designed, the Field Phase with the Special Observing Period in fall 1999, and the Analysis Phase that is still ongoing and has brought a wealth of exciting new results and insight in mountain meteorology. The fourth phase of MAP, called MAP D-PHASE and approved as the second Forecast Demonstration Project (FDP) of World Weather Research Programme (WWRP), aims at demonstrating some of the many achievements of MAP, in particular the ability of forecasting heavy precipitation and related flooding events in the Alpine region. It mainly builds on the MAP achievements with respect to understanding orographic precipitation, high-resolution numerical modelling, hydrological modelling, hydrological modelling, radar technique and ensemble forecasting. MAP D-PHASE will address the entire forecasting chain ranging from limited-area ensemble forecasting, high-resolution atmospheric modelling (km-scale), hydrologic modelling, and nowcasting to decision making by the end users, i.e., it is foreseen to set up an end-to-end flood forecasting system. The demonstration period of MAP D-PHASE, which stands for Demonstration of Probabilistic Hydrological and Atmospheric Simulation of flood Events in the Alpine region, will be June to November 2007, encompassing the ‘classical' MAP period (September – November) as well as the Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS) observation programme (June – August). This contribution will give an overview on the end-to-end forecasting system, highlight some of the components of the system, report on the status of the different planning and implementation activities, give an outlook on the challenges that remain to be solved within the next twelve months, and identify the opportunities for interested groups to joint the project.