Assessment of simulations of a polar low with the Canadian Regional Climate Model
Polar lows (PLs), which are intense maritime polar mesoscale cyclones, are associated with severe weather conditions. Due to their small size and rapid development, PL forecasting remains a challenge. Convection-permitting models are adequate to forecast PLs since, compared to coarser models, they p...
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Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292250 https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292250 |
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crplos:10.1371/journal.pone.0292250 2024-05-19T07:46:19+00:00 Assessment of simulations of a polar low with the Canadian Regional Climate Model Moreno-Ibáñez, Marta Laprise, René Gachon, Philippe Li, Delei Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Faculty of Sciences, UQAM Trottier Family Foundation Canada Foundation for Innovation Ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation du Québec les Fonds de recherche du Québec 2023 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292250 https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292250 en eng Public Library of Science (PLoS) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ PLOS ONE volume 18, issue 10, page e0292250 ISSN 1932-6203 journal-article 2023 crplos https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292250 2024-05-01T07:09:51Z Polar lows (PLs), which are intense maritime polar mesoscale cyclones, are associated with severe weather conditions. Due to their small size and rapid development, PL forecasting remains a challenge. Convection-permitting models are adequate to forecast PLs since, compared to coarser models, they provide a better representation of convection as well as surface and near-surface processes. A PL that formed over the Norwegian Sea on 25 March 2019 was simulated using the convection-permitting Canadian Regional Climate Model version 6 (CRCM6/GEM4, using a grid mesh of 2.5 km) driven by the reanalysis ERA5. The objectives of this study were to quantify the impact of the initial conditions on the simulation of the PL, and to assess the skill of the CRCM6/GEM4 at reproducing the PL. The results show that the skill of the CRCM6/GEM4 at reproducing the PL strongly depends on the initial conditions. Although in all simulations the synoptic environment is favourable for PL development, with a strong low-level temperature gradient and an upper-level through, only the low-level atmospheric fields of three of the simulations lead to PL development through baroclinic instability. The two simulations that best captured the PL represent a PL deeper than the observed one, and they show higher temperature mean bias compared to the other simulations, indicating that the ocean surface fluxes may be too strong. In general, ERA5 has more skill than the simulations at reproducing the observed PL, but the CRCM6/GEM4 simulation with initialisation time closer to the genesis time of the PL reproduces quite well small scale features as low-level baroclinic instability during the PL development phase. Article in Journal/Newspaper Norwegian Sea PLOS PLOS ONE 18 10 e0292250 |
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English |
description |
Polar lows (PLs), which are intense maritime polar mesoscale cyclones, are associated with severe weather conditions. Due to their small size and rapid development, PL forecasting remains a challenge. Convection-permitting models are adequate to forecast PLs since, compared to coarser models, they provide a better representation of convection as well as surface and near-surface processes. A PL that formed over the Norwegian Sea on 25 March 2019 was simulated using the convection-permitting Canadian Regional Climate Model version 6 (CRCM6/GEM4, using a grid mesh of 2.5 km) driven by the reanalysis ERA5. The objectives of this study were to quantify the impact of the initial conditions on the simulation of the PL, and to assess the skill of the CRCM6/GEM4 at reproducing the PL. The results show that the skill of the CRCM6/GEM4 at reproducing the PL strongly depends on the initial conditions. Although in all simulations the synoptic environment is favourable for PL development, with a strong low-level temperature gradient and an upper-level through, only the low-level atmospheric fields of three of the simulations lead to PL development through baroclinic instability. The two simulations that best captured the PL represent a PL deeper than the observed one, and they show higher temperature mean bias compared to the other simulations, indicating that the ocean surface fluxes may be too strong. In general, ERA5 has more skill than the simulations at reproducing the observed PL, but the CRCM6/GEM4 simulation with initialisation time closer to the genesis time of the PL reproduces quite well small scale features as low-level baroclinic instability during the PL development phase. |
author2 |
Li, Delei Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Faculty of Sciences, UQAM Trottier Family Foundation Canada Foundation for Innovation Ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation du Québec les Fonds de recherche du Québec |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Moreno-Ibáñez, Marta Laprise, René Gachon, Philippe |
spellingShingle |
Moreno-Ibáñez, Marta Laprise, René Gachon, Philippe Assessment of simulations of a polar low with the Canadian Regional Climate Model |
author_facet |
Moreno-Ibáñez, Marta Laprise, René Gachon, Philippe |
author_sort |
Moreno-Ibáñez, Marta |
title |
Assessment of simulations of a polar low with the Canadian Regional Climate Model |
title_short |
Assessment of simulations of a polar low with the Canadian Regional Climate Model |
title_full |
Assessment of simulations of a polar low with the Canadian Regional Climate Model |
title_fullStr |
Assessment of simulations of a polar low with the Canadian Regional Climate Model |
title_full_unstemmed |
Assessment of simulations of a polar low with the Canadian Regional Climate Model |
title_sort |
assessment of simulations of a polar low with the canadian regional climate model |
publisher |
Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292250 https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292250 |
genre |
Norwegian Sea |
genre_facet |
Norwegian Sea |
op_source |
PLOS ONE volume 18, issue 10, page e0292250 ISSN 1932-6203 |
op_rights |
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0292250 |
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PLOS ONE |
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18 |
container_issue |
10 |
container_start_page |
e0292250 |
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