TEAMx-UIBK

TEAMx is an international research programme that brings together multiple research groups from around the world to study transport and exchange processes in the atmosphere over mountains. The overall objectives of TEAMx are (i) to improve our understanding of exchange processes that occur at multiple scales in the atmosphere over mountainous terrain, (ii) to improve the representation of these processes in numerical weather and climate prediction models, (iii) to collect a unique dataset during a coordinated, one-year long field campaign in the Alps, the TEAMx Observational Campaign (TOC), that can be used for objectives (i) and (ii), and (iv) to provide support to weather and climate service providers. A summary of the motivation for TEAMx and its scientific goals can be found in the TEAMx White Paper (Serafin et al. 2020) and in Rotach et al. (2022). 

The University of Innsbruck (UIBK) is among the major contributors to TEAMx, even though it does not have a single TEAMx project financed by one funding agency. Different research activities supported through both third-party and institutional funding are being conducted in a coordinated manner to address the TEAMx objectives (i) to (iii). The purpose of this document is therefore to provide an overview of these coordinated research efforts and the main research questions to be addressed. With one of the TEAMx Target Areas for the TOC being in the Inn Valley (IVTA), contributions to observational activities from both permanent and experimental instrumentation are abundant and will importantly contribute to objective (iii). Several pre-campaigns have already been conducted or are planned in the IVTA before the TOC, which is planned for autumn 2024 to autumn 2025. Numerical modelling activities are similarly conducted within third-party funded projects as well as institutional activities (e.g., student thesis projects) on short time scales, as well as high-resolution (km-scale) regional climate simulations over mountainous terrain, which are targeted towards model validation and improvement using observational data (objective (ii)) and towards process understanding (objective (i)).

The contributing individual projects are briefly outlined and the involved funding and personnel resources are summarized. The same information is provided for the contributed permanent resources. Altogether, this document provides a synopsis of the contribution to TEAMx by the members of the University of Innsbruck, thus forming an umbrella project termed TEAMx-UIBK. As such, this document is meant to be updated as new proposals are being written and funded, new activities are being planned, and new ideas emerge.