Identification

Title

Evaluation of WRF parameterizations for climate studies over southern Spain using a multistep regionalization

Abstract

This paper evaluates the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) sensitivity to eight different combinations of cumulus, microphysics, and planetary boundary layer (PBL) parameterization schemes over a topographically complex region in southern Spain (Andalusia) for the period 1990-99. The WRF configuration consisted of a 10-km-resolution domain nested in a coarser domain driven by 40-yr European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Re-Analysis (ERA-40) data, with spectral nudging above the PBL employed over the latter domain. The model outputs have been compared at different time scales with an observational dataset that comprises 438 rain gauges and 152 temperature stations with records of both daily maximum and minimum temperatures. To reduce the "representation error" the validation with observations has been performed using a multistep regionalization that distinguishes five precipitation regions and four temperature regions. The analysis proves that both cumulus and PBL schemes have a crucial impact on the description of precipitation in Andalusia, whereas no noticeable differences between microphysics options were appreciated. Temperature is described similarly by all the configurations, except for the PBL choice affecting minimum values. WRF provides a definite improvement over ERA-40 in the climate description in terms of frequency, spatial distribution, and intensity of extreme events. It also captures more accurately the annual cycle and reduces the biases and the RMSE for monthly precipitation, whereas only a minor enhancement of these features was obtained for monthly-mean maximum and minimum temperatures. The results indicate that WRF is able to correctly reproduce Andalusian climate and produces useful added-value information for climate studies.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7vh5phz

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2011-11-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright 2011 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact