Priority Program 1167 PQP of the German Research Foundation

The Priority Program 1167 “Quantitative Precipitation Forecast” of the German Research Foundation is a joint and coordinated effort of university institutes and other research institutions together with the Division of Research and Development of the German Weather Service. It was initiated in 2004 because quantitative precipitation forecast was still is of such poor quality that it could hardly be used for many applications, e.g. in hydrology. The scientific objects of the priority program are
1. Identification of physical and chemical processes responsible for the deficiencies in quantitative precipitation forecast
2. Determination and use of the potentials of existing and new data and process descriptions to improve quantitative precipitation forecast
3. Determination of the prognosis capacity of weather forecast models by statistico-dynamic analyses with respect to quantitative precipitation forecast
An important aspect of the project was the field experiment COPS which took place in summer 2007 in the Black Forest as well as the General Observation Period (GOP) where observations for the whole year 2007 were collected on a common platform.

Within the priority program 1167 “Quantitative Precipitation Forecast” a large number of research projects deal with precipitation related topics like convection and orography, microphysics, data assimilation and verification. The research activities are supported by a three months field experiment which took place from June to August 2007 (Convective and Orograhically induced Precipitation Study) and the General Observation Period (GOP) for the whole year 2007 with the aim to gather a comprehensive data set suitable for testing hypotheses and new modeling techniques developed within PQP.
More detailed information on the priority program and the associated projects can be found on the website of the SPP-QNV. MeteoSwiss participates in two projects of this priority program, namely DAQUA and D-PHASE COPS.