Science activity

CW3E works directly with water managers in the West to develop science and tools designed to better prepare for the variability inherent in the western US climate. Atmospheric River (AR) Reconnaissance (AR Recon) campaigns support improved prediction of landfalling ARs on the U.S. west coast. ARs are a type of storm that is key to the region's precipitation, flooding, and water supply. Forecasts of landfalling ARs are critical to precipitation prediction and yet are in error by +/- 400 km at even just 3-day lead time (see figure to the right;Wick et al. 2013). The concept for AR Recon was first recommended in a report to the Western States Water Council (Ralph et al. 2014) that was prepared by a broad cross-disciplinary group in 2013. AR Recon was conducted with 3 missions in 2016, 6 in 2018, and 6 in 2019. USACE and the California Department of Water Resources were key sponsors of the AR Recon 2018 and 2019 campaigns. Aircraft that are normally used for hurricane reconnaissance were deployed over the northeast Pacific to collect observations to support improved AR forecasts. The data were assimilated by global modeling centers in real-time.