Simulation of interannual variability of summer rainfall over the Tibetan Plateau by the Weather Research and Forecasting model

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 756-767 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xingwen Jiang ◽  
Yao Wu ◽  
Yueqing Li ◽  
Jianchuan Shu
Author(s):  
Alessio Golzio ◽  
Silvia Ferrarese ◽  
Claudio Cassardo ◽  
Gugliemina Adele Diolaiuti ◽  
Manuela Pelfini

AbstractWeather forecasts over mountainous terrain are challenging due to the complex topography that is necessarily smoothed by actual local-area models. As complex mountainous territories represent 20% of the Earth’s surface, accurate forecasts and the numerical resolution of the interaction between the surface and the atmospheric boundary layer are crucial. We present an assessment of the Weather Research and Forecasting model with two different grid spacings (1 km and 0.5 km), using two topography datasets (NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and Global Multi-resolution Terrain Elevation Data 2010, digital elevation models) and four land-cover-description datasets (Corine Land Cover, U.S. Geological Survey land-use, MODIS30 and MODIS15, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer land-use). We investigate the Ortles Cevadale region in the Rhaetian Alps (central Italian Alps), focusing on the upper Forni Glacier proglacial area, where a micrometeorological station operated from 28 August to 11 September 2017. The simulation outputs are compared with observations at this micrometeorological station and four other weather stations distributed around the Forni Glacier with respect to the latent heat, sensible heat and ground heat fluxes, mixing-layer height, soil moisture, 2-m air temperature, and 10-m wind speed. The different model runs make it possible to isolate the contributions of land use, topography, grid spacing, and boundary-layer parametrizations. Among the considered factors, land use proves to have the most significant impact on results.


2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (9) ◽  
pp. 2008-2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Zhang ◽  
Ying-Hwa Kuo ◽  
Shu-Ya Chen ◽  
Xiang-Yu Huang ◽  
Ling-Feng Hsiao

Abstract The nonlocal excess phase observation operator for assimilating the global positioning system (GPS) radio occultation (RO) sounding data has been proven by some research papers to produce significantly better analyses for numerical weather prediction (NWP) compared to the local refractivity observation operator. However, the high computational cost and the difficulties in parallelization associated with the nonlocal GPS RO operator deter its application in research and operational NWP practices. In this article, two strategies are designed and implemented in the data assimilation system for the Weather Research and Forecasting Model to demonstrate the capability of parallel assimilation of GPS RO profiles with the nonlocal excess phase observation operator. In particular, to solve the parallel load imbalance problem due to the uneven geographic distribution of the GPS RO observations, round-robin scheduling is adopted to distribute GPS RO observations among the processing cores to balance the workload. The wall clock time required to complete a five-iteration minimization on a demonstration Antarctic case with 106 GPS RO observations is reduced from more than 3.5 h with a single processing core to 2.5 min with 106 processing cores. These strategies present the possibility of application of the nonlocal GPS RO excess phase observation operator in operational data assimilation systems with a cutoff time limit.


Author(s):  
Reneta Dimitrova ◽  
Ashish Sharma ◽  
Harindra J. S. Fernando ◽  
Ismail Gultepe ◽  
Ventsislav Danchovski ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 7393-7410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiani Tan ◽  
Joshua S. Fu ◽  
Gregory R. Carmichael ◽  
Syuichi Itahashi ◽  
Zhining Tao ◽  
...  

Abstract. This study compares the performance of 12 regional chemical transport models (CTMs) from the third phase of the Model Inter-Comparison Study for Asia (MICS-Asia III) on simulating the particulate matter (PM) over East Asia (EA) in 2010. The participating models include the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Community Multiscale Air Quality (WRF-CMAQ; v4.7.1 and v5.0.2), the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System coupled with CMAQ (RAMS-CMAQ; v4.7.1 and v5.0.2), the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with chemistry (WRF-Chem; v3.6.1 and v3.7.1), Goddard Earth Observing System coupled with chemistry (GEOS-Chem), a non-hydrostatic model coupled with chemistry (NHM-Chem), the Nested Air Quality Prediction Modeling System (NAQPMS) and the NASA-Unified WRF (NU-WRF). This study investigates three model processes as the possible reasons for different model performances on PM. (1) Models perform very differently in the gas–particle conversion of sulfur (S) and oxidized nitrogen (N). The model differences in sulfur oxidation ratio (50 %) are of the same magnitude as that in SO42- concentrations. The gas–particle conversion is one of the main reasons for different model performances on fine mode PM. (2) Models without dust emission modules can perform well on PM10 at non-dust-affected sites but largely underestimate (up to 50 %) the PM10 concentrations at dust sites. The implementation of dust emission modules in the models has largely improved the model accuracies at dust sites (reduce model bias to −20 %). However, both the magnitude and distribution of dust pollution are not fully captured. (3) The amounts of modeled depositions vary among models by 75 %, 39 %, 21 % and 38 % for S wet, S dry, N wet and N dry depositions, respectively. Large inter-model differences are found in the washout ratios of wet deposition (at most 170 % in India) and dry deposition velocities (generally 0.3–2 cm s−1 differences over inland regions).


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (24) ◽  
pp. 9965-9977 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ge Liu ◽  
Ping Zhao ◽  
Junming Chen

The summer (June–August) Asian–Pacific Oscillation (APO), a large-scale atmospheric teleconnection pattern, is closely associated with climate anomalies over the Northern Hemisphere. Using the NOAA/CIRES twentieth-century reanalysis, the ECMWF twentieth-century atmospheric reanalysis, and the NCEP reanalysis, this study investigates the variability of the summer APO on the interannual time scale and its relationship with the thermal condition over the Tibetan Plateau (TP). The results show that the interannual variability of the APO is steadily related to the summer TP surface air temperature during the last 100 years. Observation and simulation further show that a positive heating anomaly over the TP can increase the upper-tropospheric temperature and upward motion over Asia. This anomalous upward flow moves northward in the upper troposphere, and then turns and moves eastward, before finally descending over the mid- to high latitudes of the central-eastern North Pacific, concurrently accompanied by anomalous upward motion over the lower latitudes of the central-eastern North Pacific. The anomalous downward and upward motions over the central-eastern North Pacific reduce the in situ mid- and upper-tropospheric temperature, mainly through modulating condensation latent heat from precipitation and/or dry adiabatic heat, which ultimately leads to the interannual variability of the summer APO. In this process, the zonal vertical circulation over the extratropical Asian–North Pacific sector plays an important bridging role.


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