Identification

Title

Implementation of a roughness sublayer parameterization in the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF version 3.7.1) and its evaluation for regional climate simulations

Abstract

The roughness sublayer (RSL) is one compartment of the surface layer (SL) where turbulence deviates from Monin-Obukhov similarity theory. As the computing power increases, model grid sizes approach the gray zone of turbulence in the energy-containing range and the lowest model layer is located within the RSL. From this perspective, the RSL has an important implication in atmospheric modeling research. However, it has not been explicitly simulated in atmospheric mesoscale models. This study incorporates the RSL model proposed by Harman and Finnigan (2007, 2008) into the Jimenez et al. (2012) SL scheme. A high-resolution simulation performed with the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) illustrates the impacts of the RSL parameterization on the wind, air temperature, and rainfall simulation in the atmospheric boundary layer. As the roughness parameters vary with the atmospheric stability and vegetative phenology in the RSL model, our RSL implementation reproduces the observed surface wind, particularly over tall canopies in the winter season by reducing the root mean square error (RMSE) from 3.1 to 1.8m s(-1). Moreover, the improvement is relevant to air temperature (from 2.74 to 2.67K of RMSE) and precipitation (from 140 to 135mm per month of RMSE). Our findings suggest that the RSL must be properly considered both for better weather and climate simulations and for the application of wind energy and atmospheric dispersion.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7db8529

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

2020-02-11T00:00:00Z

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

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