EAGER: Collaborative Research: Chilean Coastal Orographic Precipitation Experiment pilot project (CCOPE-2015)

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AbstractA team of investigators, working with colleagues in Chile, will undertake a multi-month (May-August, 2015) deployment to the Nahuelbuta Mountains of Southern Chile to measure orographic induced precipitation during the southern hemisphere wet season. This geographic location will allow the investigators to test the generality of existing theories of coastal orographic precipitation in comparison with similar mountains along the Coastal Range of California. This research will lead to potential new discoveries of coastal precipitation patterns along the southern South America coastline. Intellectual MeritThe geographic location of the Nahuelbuta Mountains of southern Chile provides a unique location to study the role of aerosols and small-scale motions in orographic precipitation. Details of precipitation processes have not been examined for coastal South America. As such, data collected during this field experiment will serve as a critical test of existing theories or coastal orographic precipitation and compared with well-studied areas such as the coastal mountain ranges of California. Simultaneous vertical measurements of thermodynamic properties, aerosol distributions, rainfall size distributions, and radar profiles will aid in the characterization of relationships between precipitation, aerosol loading, and small scale convective motions. Broader ImpactsTwo graduate students will gain invaluable experience in field measurements of precipitation. Additionally, this team will work with Chilean researchers and will educate local secondary school children from Chile on the outcomes of these experiments. This research will result in observational datasets from an area of the world largely under-served by modern instrumentation. These data will be used in the evaluation of numerical models and testing of quantitative precipitation estimation algorithms based on remote sensing.