Development and Testing of Polar WRF. Part III: Arctic Land*

A version of the state-of-the-art Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) has been developed for use in polar climates. The model known as ‘‘Polar WRF’ ’ is tested for land areas with a western Arctic grid that has 25-km resolution. This work serves as preparation for the high-resolutionArctic...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Keith M. Hines, David H. Bromwich, Le-sheng Bai, Michael Barlage, Andrew G. Slater
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2009
Subjects:
Arctic
albedo
north slope
Alaska
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.669.7448
http://polarmet.osu.edu/PolarMet/PMGFulldocs/hines_bromwich_jc_2011.pdf
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Summary:A version of the state-of-the-art Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) has been developed for use in polar climates. The model known as ‘‘Polar WRF’ ’ is tested for land areas with a western Arctic grid that has 25-km resolution. This work serves as preparation for the high-resolutionArctic SystemReanalysis of the years 2000–10. The model is based upon WRF version 3.0.1.1, with improvements to the Noah land surface model and snow/ice treatment. Simulations consist of a series of 48-h integrations initialized daily at 0000 UTC, with the initial 24 h taken as spinup for atmospheric hydrology and boundary layer processes. Soil temperature andmoisture that have amuch slower spinup than the atmosphere are cycled from 48-h output of earlier runs. Arctic conditions are simulated for a winter-to-summer seasonal cycle from 15November 2006 to 1August 2007. Simulation results are comparedwith a variety of observations from severalAlaskan sites, with emphasis on the North Slope. Polar WRF simulation results show good agreement with most near-surface observations. Warm temperature biases are found for winter and summer. A sensitivity experiment with reduced soil heat conductivity, however, improves simulation of near-surface temperature, ground heat flux, and soil temperature during winter. There is a marked deficit in summer cloud cover over land with excessive incident shortwave radiation. The cloud deficit may result from anomalous vertical mixing of moisture by the turbulence parameterization. The new snow albedo parameterization for WRF 3.1.1 is successfully tested for snowmelt over the North Slope of Alaska. 1.

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