Cool-Season Precipitation:
Fundamentals and Applications

Sommersemester 2019
Course Description
A graduate survey of cool-season precipitation processes, impacts, and prediction including precipitation measurement, winter storms, extratropical cyclones, orographic precipitation, and related topics.
My Assumptions
This course is for graduate students in the atmospheric, cryospheric, and related environmental sciences. Students should have taken calculus and calculus-based physics courses and possess a basic (not advanced) understanding of meteorology and climate. I encourage and will take advantage of the diverse student backgrounds from outside the atmospheric sciences.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of this course, students will be able to: (1) characterize and explain the global and regional distributions of precipitation and snowfall, including spatial variations in complex terrain, (2) diagnose the dynamic, thermodynamic, and microphyiscal processes affecting cool-season precipitation and winter storms in a variety of synoptic, mesoscale, and orographic settings, and (3) begin to apply this knowledge for research in the atmospheric, cryospheric, and related environmental sciences.
Format
Class meets on Tuesdays from 14.00-15.30 in Geologie Schausammlung, 2nd floor, room no. 218, Bruno-Sandner-Haus and involves pre-class readings, lectures, and practical exercises that include student presentations, group discussions, and active-learning exercises. Note: On 12 March, class starts early and will be from 13.30-15.00.
Course Materials
Readings and other course materials come primarily from the peer reviewed literature and textbooks that should be freely available from University of Innsbruck IP addresses.
Grading
This is a course for self-motivated and engaged graduate students. I expect students to read assigned materials prior to class, to actively participate in class and group learning activities, and to give high-quality presentations.
Students must miss no more than 2 classes to receive a grade.
Grading is based on particpation (30%), an oral presentation (35%), and a final exam (35%).
Rubrics for the participation and oral presentation grades are available in the left-hand navigation bar.
Final grades will be assigned as follows:
- 90 or higher = 1
- 80-89 = 2
- 70-79 = 3
- 60-69 = 4
- Below 60 = 5
Student Presentations
Each student will give an oral presentation, which allows the class to see a broader range of perspectives on course topics. Class may be extended on days with oral presentations. Each presentation should be 12 minutes in legnth plus 3 minutes for questions and can be a traditional conference-style presentation (e.g., intro, data and methods, results, conclusions), a summary of case studies or literature reviews, or a discussion of recent advances or unsolved problems or paradoxes in the topic area.
Students will select a topic area for their presentation early in the semester. Topic areas are identified in the schedule below.
Schedule and Readings
March 5: Course Overview (notes)
March 12: Precipitation systems, microphysical processes, and global precipitation characteristics (notes)
Houze (2014, Cloud Dynamics) Chapter 1 through section 1.3 and Chapter 3 through section 3.2.8
Adler et al. (2017)
March 19: Global precipitation characteristics (notes) and precipitation measurement (notes)
March 26: Student Presentations I
Topics in the climatology of cool-season precipitation. Examples include overviews of the cool-season precipitation climatology (e.g., distribution, seasonality, solid precipitation fraction, key phenomena, extremes) of cool-season precipitation in selected regions such as the Andean states of South America, Japan, continental western United States, western Canada, Himalaya and high-mountain Asia, northeast United States, or Antarctica. If desired, high-resolution precipitation analyses are available at worldclim.org
April 2: Winter-Storm Fundamentals (notes)
Stewart et al. (2015)
Rauber et al. (2000)
Alcott and Steenburgh (2010)
April 9: EGU (No Class)
April 16: Easter Break
April 23: Easter Break
April 30: Student Presentations II
Topics in precipitation measurement and winter-storm fundamentals. Examples include the SLR climatology of the Alpine region and approaches used for prediction, the climatology of freezing rain and ice pellets in the Alpine region (including key synoptic, mesoscale, orogrpahic, and microphysical/diabatic processes), snowfall measurement practices in the Alpine region (including the differing instruments, methods, errors, and uncertainties of gauge observations), and challenges of radar in the Alpine region.
May 7: Clouds and Precipitation in Extratropical Cyclones (notes); Cold-Air Damming (notes)
Houze (2014, Cloud Dynamics) Chapter 11
Bell and Bosart (1988)
May 14: Cold-Air Damming; Atmospheric Rivers (notes)
Steenburgh et al. (1997)
Rutz et al. (2014)
Froidevaux and Martius (2016)
May 21: Student Presentations III
Topics in extratropical cyclones, cold-air damming, and atmospheric rivers. Examples include impacts of Atmospheric Rivers on a selected region of interest, dynamics or processes associated with mesoscale bands in extratropical cyclones, influence of cold-air damming or terrain-driven flows on snow levels, processes contributing to snow level variability in the Alps, contributions of extratropical cyclones to the global precipitation climatology.
May 28: Orographic Precipitation (notes)
Houze (2012)
Colle et al. (2013)
June 4: Exam
June 11: Lake- and Sea-Effect Precipitation (notes)
Reading to be announced
June 18: Student Presentations IV
Topics in orographic precipitation and lake- and sea-effect precipitation. Examples include processes in orographic precipitation in a selected region, lake- or sea-effect produced by bodies of water such as the North Sea, Adriatic Sea, or Black Sea, theoretical aspects of orographic convection, prediction of orographic precipitation by ensembles, and challenges of orographic precipitation in climate models.
June 25: Student Presentations V
Topics that integrate across the subjects covered in the class or are interdisciplinary. Examples include assessments of global or regional climate model precipitation and snowfall predictinos, performance of operational forecast models and ensembles, precipitation and glacier mass balance, hydrologic or ecologic impacts including floods and drought.