《Mesoscale modeling for mountain weather forecasting over the Himalayas》.pdf

MESOSCALE MODELING FOR MOUNTAIN WEATHER FORECASTING OVER THE HIMALAYAS BY SOMESHWAR DAS, S. V. SINGH, E. N. RAJAGOPAL, AND ROBERT GALL Severe weather over the Himalayas has calamitous effect, due to complex terrain, poor development, and a fragile economy, and warrants intensified disaster mitigation through increased observations from radars and satellites and further application of mesoscale models. orthwest India and the Himalayas (Fig. 1) are Nparticularly prone to vagaries of severe weather, which claims casualties every year. This region is influ- enced by extratropical dis- turbances that propagate from the west to India during winter, bringing rainfall and chilly weather. These systems severely influence life in the Himalayas by inducing wide- spread rainfall and, at times, very heavy snowfall associ- FIG. 1. Topography over the Indian region. AFFILIATIONS: DAS, SINGH, AND RAJAGOPAL—National Centre for E-mail: somesh@ncmrwf.gov.in Medium Range Weather Forecasting, New Delhi, India; GALL— DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-84-9-1237 National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado In final form 7 March 2003 CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Dr. Someshwar Das, NCMRWF, ©2003 American Meteorological Society INSAT Building, Lodhi Rd., New Delhi 110 003, India AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY SEPTEMBER 2003 | 1237 TABLE 1. Workshop speakers, affiliations, and presentation titles. Speaker Affiliation Title of talk R. Gall NCAR The Observing System Res