FS 3.165: Mountain Precipitation Change

One of the biggest uncertainties in climate modeling is still precipitation. In mountainous environments precipitation in particular, is suffering from a lack of observations that are also starkly decreasing in density with increase in altitude. That, combined with large spatial and temporal variability due to topography that affects the total amount, intensity and type of precipitation makes for a challenging problem to address. Mountain precipitation accounts for much of the water availability in many mountain regions and their downstream regions. As such any changes will directly affect our environment and society. In this session we plan to explore the research on mountain precipitation, how it changes in a changing climate and how to tackle the observation -modeling mismatch. Although more observations are obviously needed, given the constraints in general on resources the biggest question remains on how to capture the variability effectively. With increasing model spatial resolution, the evaluation and validation of mode output becomes increasingly difficult. We invite papers to discuss the various observation strategies of precipitation in mountainous regions, novel methods of observation including those that use AI/ML, earth observation/remote sensing and/or citizen science. We also invite papers that discuss model advances and evaluate modeling and reanalysis products against in-situ and remote sensing observations in mountainous regions to address the lack of observations.