The recently initiated pilot study on the water cycling processes, participated in by several DOE laboratories, focuses on coupled atmosphere/ hydrology models at regional-to-basin scales to depict water balance. The Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) is being used as the mesoscale atmospheric model within such a suite of models at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

It is understandable that high-resolution simulations are desirable but not computationally feasible at seasonal scales (i.e., several months to a year). However, it is generally known that there are fewer days with rain and/ or snow producing storms within any given month over a region. Based on the above note, several intensive simulation periods (ISPs) for the spring months (March, April, May, and June), will be identified and simulated at high resolution (1-km) over the south central Kansas and the north central Oklahoma region. On clear days, the resolution issues and parameterizations of microphysical processes will be less emphasized, to increase simulation efficiency. These simulations will be validated against available observations and more importantly will be used (upon validation) to verify retrieval algorithms employed in remote observations (e.g., by radars) of cloud processes.