Boundary Layer, Urban Meteorology, and Land-Surface Processes Seminar Series presents...
Turbulent Transport and Surface Interactions within Inhomogeneous Atmospheric Environments: An Evaluation of Parameterization Schemes in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model
Jeremy A. Gibbs
The University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology
01 December 2008, 4:00 PM
National Weather Center, Room 5930
120 David L. Boren Blvd.
University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK
Directions to the NWC (.pdf, 60 kb)
The WRF model is a popular tool in both research and operational meteorology. The relative ease of simulating meteorological phenomena using computational grid spacing on the order of 1 to 4 km, defined in numerical weather prediction as fine-scale, makes the model pertinent to many applications. Such proficiency, however, lends itself to “blackbox” users who are simply content to achieve results with the assumption that the model represents fine-scale atmospheric flow features with absolute accuracy. This assumption is made without proper regard to the underlying physical parameterization schemes, namely in terms of turbulent transport and surface interactions (TTSI) within the boundary layer. This seminar reviews a limited and sensible subset of such TTSI schemes and evaluates their capacity to represent meteorological quantities within inhomogeneous environments. This is accomplished through comparisons with observations, gridded analyses, and results from a large eddy simulation (LES). The goal is to present a coherent appraisal of each scheme and to offer guidance on their use.
Boundary Layer, Urban Meteorology, and Land-Surface Processes Seminar Series website