Update on the Regional Modeling System NASA Roses Meeting April 13, 2007

Supported by the Northwest Modeling Consortium…the regional modeling effort centered at the UW is Running the MM5 at 36, 12, and 4 km resolution Running the new WRF model at 36, 12 km and 4 km resolution Running TWO high resolution regional ensemble systems to provide probabilistic forecasts and data assimilation Gathering all local weather observations from dozens of networks. Plus quality control. Running a wide range of weather applications dealing with air quality, hydrology, transportation weather and fire weather.

36 km

12 km

4 km

A Few of the Major Efforts and Improvements this Year

Evaluation of WRF WRF: the Weather Research and Forecasting Model, is the replacement for the MM5 and should be the national mesoscale model used by both the operational and research community. We are now running it at 36, 12 and 4 km grid spacing, and recently replaced our previous test version with the newest version with major physics improvements and nudging on the outer domain.

Evaluation The new real-time version of WRF will be evaluated this spring and for major historical cases. If equal or superior, the modeling consortium will probably ok the shift from MM5 to WRF. Evaluations of old version show differences but not superiority.

New UW WRF

Example of Old MM5 vs WRF Verifications

March 1 Convergence Zone Event

The UW Quality Control System A major task continues to be the gathering of all real-time observations of the region into one place Right now we acquire over 60 networks in real time for displaying on our web site, verification, and many other uses Quality Control is essential for such a heterogeneous network of networks.

The UW Quality Control and Warning System We have developed an advanced QC system suitable for an area of complex terrain (Jeff Baars) Have also created an automated QC display system that one can check on the web and which can automatically tell the manager of a network when their data is suspect (David Carey)

Direction QC

Satellite and Other Data Assets We are acquiring a substantial number of satellite and other observational assets. These include cloud and water vapor winds, satellite radiances, microwave and scattermeter data. Also ACARS data.

Regional Data Assimilation: The Next Major Challenge Until this point, the high resolution regional prediction effort has been based on cold starts using grids from other model centers for IC and BCs. Key area for improvement is to begin our own assimilation of observation assets to determine whether we can improve initialization and forecasts over the Pacific, and to better initialize mesoscale structures over land. The EnKF work, spearheaded by Greg Hakim, offers a potent approach for such assimilation.

Local Data Assimilation A major new effort has begun to assimilate all local observations to create a physically consistent three dimensional picture of the regional atmosphere. Needed for many reasons…including better short- term forecasts and for air quality studies which demand descriptions of the 3D state of the atmosphere. The current UW approach makes use of a 90- member ensemble system--Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF)--probably the best approach possible for using the forecast model to use local observations

EnKF Data Assimilation Ryan Torn and Greg Hakim developed an initial EnKF system at 45 km grid spacing using 90 members. Has shown great promise. This has led to a joint project between Hakim/Mass groups to replace the old EnKF system with a truly mesoscale (36/12 km) version…which is now running (Brian Ancell lead)

Local Data Assimilation The system produces 90 different analyses that can be combined to produce the best guess at what is there and tell us the uncertainty in the analyses. These analyses can be integrated forward in time to give us probabilistic predictions of the future We now have it running at 36 and 12 km resolution…

Regional Data Assimilation The system is easily capable of dealing with many traditional (ASOS, sounding) and non-traditional (ACARS, cloud and water vapor track winds, radar winds) data types. Can be extended to radiances and other remote sensing types if we acquire the necessary forward models. Will be the basis for the NASA Roses work

The END

Map Selection Interface We have a new map interface for getting soundings, time height cross sections and meteograms at ANY location. Done by Phil Regulski