Environmental Fluid Mechanics @ Princeton |
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Multiscale-Atmospheric Simulations Using WRF The aim of this study is to reconstruct, by means of atmospheric numeric simulations, the most realistic and detailed state of the atmospheric boundary layer. This will move us from idealized to "real-world" ABL simulations and will allow us, for example, to study land-atmosphere interaction during a whole diurnal cycle over urban areas. To that end, we run a mesoscale non-hydrostatic atmospheric model, the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model, in a configuration that consists of 3 two-way nested simulation domains starting at a domain size of 10,000 km feeding into 3 additional two-way nested simulations in WRFʹs LES mode; the LES simulations reach down to domain sizes of a few kilometers and grid resolutions of about 40 m in the horizontal direction and a few meters in the vertical direction (stretched grid, see figure below). This increased resolution and nested configuration will ensure that mesoscale variability at the smallest scales is captured.
The WRF model is initialized with the finest resolution data:
These nested WRF simulations can subsequently be used to provide realistic mesoscale forcing to the pseudospectral LES code that allows an explicit 3D representation of urban canopies. These simulations are being compared to experimental data over Princeton (see Figure below) acquired by our collaborators in the The Hydrometeorology Research Group. Work is also ongoing to integrate these simulation with data from sensor networks (e.g. SNOP, mesonet / CCNY network) to provide accurate measurements at fine resolution of surface fluxes and skin temperature to our models.
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