CHARACTERIZATION OF CONVECTION-RELATED PARAMETERS BY RAMAN LIDAR: ANALYSIS OF SELECTED CASE STUDIES FROM THE CONVECTIVE AND OROGRAPHICALLY-INDUCEDPRECIPITATION STUDY

This work illustrates an approach to determine the convective available potential energy (CAPE) and the convective inhibition (CIN) based on the use of data from a Raman lidar system. The use of Raman lidar data allows to provide high temporal resolution (5 min) measurements of CAPE and CIN and follow their evolution over extended time period covering the full cycle of convective activity. Lidar-based measurements of CAPE and CIN are obtained from Raman lidar measurements of the temperature profile and the surface measurements of temperature, pressure and dew point temperature provided by a surface weather station. The approach is tested and applied to the data collected by the Raman lidar system BASIL in the frame of the Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS). Attention was focused on four selected case studies: 19 June, 30 June-1 July, 14-15 July and 25-26 July, with a specific focus on 15 July 2007. Reported measurements are found to be in good agreement with simultaneous measurements obtained from the radiosondes launched in Achern and with estimates from different mesoscale models