3.2 Report of a Participant
Andrea M. Rossa, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Hönggerberg, CH-8093
Zurich
Introduction
MAP is designed to be an international, intercontinental meteorological
programme expanding current knowledge of atmospheric flow over complex
terrain by making extensive use of high-resolution mesoscale numerical
models and modern observational techniques. The programme is structured in
three phases of planning, measuring and post-processing, of which phases I
and II were addressed during this first MAP workshop. The workshop was
organized by the MAP ad-hoc working group (Peter Binder, Christoph
Schär, Reinhold Steinacker, and Hans Volkert) in close collaboration
with a local organizing committee headed by Dr. Thomas Gutermann, the
director of the MeteoSwiss. It was him together with
Prof. Albert Waldvogel who opened the workshop, which was accommodated in
the facilities of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at the ETH in
Zurich. Seventy-seven scientists from forty-two institutions, thirteen
countries, and three continents were present. The main targets they had to
consider were the definition of the scientific objectives and of the
spatial/temporal location of the field phase and its observational
requirements.
The workshop was very well prepared and particularly conceived to feature
the process of decision making through combining scientists in
topic-related working groups, that underwent a series of sessions in order
to distill scientific and strategic issues. The invited papers (see
programme) gave a thorough introduction to the MAP-related scientific
topics and were, together with the abstracts of the participants, combined
in a 70 page handout. The conference banquet was presented by Ruedi
Lüthi, member of the programme panel, and his crew, in form of a
Swiss barbecue on Monday evening. From the various Swiss contributions to
this party, closest attention was paid to the red and white wines served,
even more, probably, than to the barbecue items. It gave everybody an
opportunity for informal discussions on the topics of interest or simply to
have a nice evening.
Evolution of the Scientific Programme
The following list of the six topics, predefined in a former meeting,
constituted the scientific base to begin the workshop with:
- Gravity waves and downslope winds (chairperson: R. B. Smith)
- Low-level wind systems (A. J. Thorpe)
- Orographically modified fronts (J. Egger)
- Thermally driven flows, PBL and material tracers (D. Whiteman)
- Orographic precipitation and deep convection (A. Buzzi)
- Trans-tropopause exchange (H. C. Davies)
By the second day -- after two working group sessions concerning the key
topics, scientific hypotheses and observational strategies -- marriages had
taken place between related topics to focus on key interests. Working
group 1 was combined with working group 2, and working groups 3 and 5 made
up a new entity. Working group 6 was renamed to 'upper level features'
with an emphasis on 'local weather' and split to join the newly formed
groups, while working group 4 remained somewhat isolated. During some
sessions, the participants had the opportunity to take part in working
groups which were oriented towards methodological aspects:
MAP Newsletter. November 1994