Usefulness of satellite water vapour imagery in forecasting strong convection: A flash-flood case study

Using a case study of a severe convective event as an example, a framework for interpreting 6.2 µm channel satellite imagery that enables to indicate upper-level conditioning of the convective environment is presented and discussed. In order to illustrate the approach, all convective cells during the summer of 2007 that produced precipitations over Bulgaria are considered. They are classified regarding the observed moisture pattern in mid-upper levels as well as the low-level conditions of air humidity and convergence of the flow. Water vapour (WV) images are used to study the evolution of the upper-level moist and dry structures. The proposed interpretation is that the role of the upper-level dry boundaries identified in the WV imagery as favoured areas for the initiation of deep moist convection cannot be understood (and hence cannot be forecasted accurately) by considering them in isolation from the dynamic rate at which they are maintained.The paper examines the 23 June 2006 flash flood in Sofia city as a case, in which the operational forecast of the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology of Bulgaria based on the mesoscale NWP model ALADIN underestimated the severity of the convective process. A comparison between the satellite water vapour imagery and the corresponding geopotential field of the dynamical tropopause, expressed in terms of potential vorticity (PV), shows an error in the performance of the ARPEGE operational numerical model. There is an obvious mismatch between the PV anomaly structure and the dry zone of the imagery. The forecast field shows underestimation of the tropopause height gradient and displacement of the PV anomaly to the southwest of the real position seen in the satellite image. It is concluded that the observed poor forecast is a result of the ARPEGE failure to treat correctly the interaction between the PV anomaly and the low-level warm anomaly.