COSMO PP COLOBOC Jean-Marie Bettems / MeteoSwiss Jürgen Helmert / DWD COSMO GM Cracow September 15 th -18 th, 2008

2 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 Wikipedia: COLOBOC ?

3 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 Wikipedia: Kolobok (Russian: circle side) is the main character of an East Slavic national fair tale, represented as a small yellow spherical being. He is accidentally created by an old man and his wife, as a bread dish, when he suddenly becomes animated and escapes from their home. The fair tale’s plot describes Kolobok’s meetings with various animals (rabbit, wolf, and bear) who intend to eat it, but Kolobok cunningly escapes. With each animal Kolobok sings a song in which he explains his escape: ”I got away from Grandmother, I got away from Grandfather, and I will certainly get away from you”. The fox manages to catch and eat Kolobok through distracting him by praising his singing.

4 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC – Goal Consolidation of Lower Boundary Conditions It is the main goal of this project to incorporate all activities related to the lower boundary conditions which have already reached an advanced state, and to consolidate these developments into well tested and documented software packages readily usable by the COSMO community.

5 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC – Motivation On the importance of physiographic data, an example … F. Gero and A. J. Pitman, 2006: The Impact of Land Cover Change on a Simulated Storm Event in the Sydney Basin, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, Vol. 45, No. 2 The Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) was run at a 1-km grid spacing over the Sydney basin in Australia to assess the impact of land cover change on a simulated storm event. The simulated storm used NCEP reanalysis data, first with natural (i.e., pre-European settlement in 1788) land cover and then with satellite- derived land cover representing Sydney’s current land use pattern. An intense convective storm develops in the model in close proximity to Sydney’s dense urban central business district under current land cover. The storm is absent under natural land cover conditions. A detailed investigation revealed the storm to be sensitive to the presence of agricultural land in the southwest of the domain. This area interacts with the sea breeze and affects the horizontal divergence and moisture convergence—the triggering mechanisms of the storm. Sydney 100 km Land cover 1788 Land cover current Precip mm/h

6 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC – Proposed actions Consolidate tools of general interest: externalized TERRA module software for generation of external parameters Facilitate verification tasks: facilitate access to and usage of soil/surface observations Consolidate and extend external parameters database Find and validate an optimal configuration of TERRA with its associated external parameters and look-up tables Revision of snow analysis and snow model Deployment of urban module developed in Switzerland Consolidate parameterization of land surface heterogeneity with the tile/mosaic approach

7 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC, task 0 Collect documentation about the different data sets available for SVAT-model validation (data availability, strength & weakness, etc.) Cooperation with geological agencies has been started by the CLM-Community to get long time series Some tools to facilitate processing of CEOP and Fluxnet data will also be made available within task 1 (TERRA standalone) 09/2009: Documentation on COSMO web site

8 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC, task 1 TERRA standalone is the isolated terrestrial surface module of COSMO driven by external atmospheric fields. It can be used (1) to generate balanced surface conditions by computing long term TERRA integrations, (2) to experiment with the soil model and the external parameters, (3) to run a measurement driven soil moisture analysis. It has been developed by F. Ament and is available at MeteoSwiss. 05/2009: code within the COSMO model framework (like COSMO 1D), tools, and documentation

9 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC, task 2 Consolidate software for generating external parameters. Software should be flexible and modular to support various raw datasets and to allow for experimentation with new aggregation algorithms or different look-up tables. It should be easily extensible to support future external parameters. It should support the needs of COSMO, COSMO-CLM, ICON, and GME. Will be build upon one of the already existing tools (DWD, PEP/CLM, fieldextra) 12/2009: consolidated code to process raw data 09/2010: reference system deployed at DWD, accessible via web interface

10 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC, task 3 Document and consolidate external parameters data set. Where appropriate replace older raw data sets by newer ones, adapt work done for the GME: Type of surface (land, water) FR_LAND Type and amount of vegetation ROOT, PLCOV, LAI, FOR_D, FOR_E, EMISS_RAD, PLANT_RES, NDVI climatology Type of soil (porosity and thermal properties) SOILTYP, T_2M_CL Topography of the surface (incl. subscale effects) HSURF, Z0, SSO

11 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC, task 3 (ctn‘d) Add parameters for urban fraction. Add parameters for FLake. Provide alternative sets of soil types in Europe. Address the feasibility of deriving surface characteristics with known deficiencies using alternative data sources or methods. 04/2009: revised existing external parameters 09/2009: evaluation results for alternative soil type data 12/2009: extended set of external parameters

12 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC, task 4 Developments of TERRA module have been made by different groups (GME, CLM, MeteoSwiss …), which are not yet incorporated in the official COSMO code. Continuation of work planned within WG Gather and integrate tested developments of TERRA Define a consolidated set of look-up tables and find/validate an ‘optimal’ reference configuration of TERRA 12/2008: new release of TERRA, documentation 09/2010: optimal configuration of TERRA, consolidated look-up tables in framework of task 2, results of validation

13 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC, task 5.1 A multi-layer snow model has been developed at Roshydromet, particularly describing the change of phases within the snow pack and substantially improving snow melt in spring. 01/2009: code in TERRA, documentation, results of validation 09/2010: report on partial snow cover modelling

14 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC, task 5.2 MeteoSwiss has extended the DWD snow analysis by introducing a MSG derived snow mask and an altitudinal interpolation of in-situ snow observations. Adapt analysis to the new snow model’s requirements Status of snow analysis code within COSMO? 01/2009: code, documentation, results of validation

15 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC, task 6 An urban model has been implemented in the COSMO code and validated at the EPFL in Lausanne. Minimal set of external parameters required is the urban fraction, and will be provided, but more detailed city characteristics can also be used 01/2009: urban module in official COSMO code, documentation

16 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC, task 7 Parameterization of land surface heterogeneity by the tile/mosaic approach is available at MeteoSwiss (work by F.Ament) Consolidate & validate implementation Evaluate impact with nature/urban/lake/sea tiles Evaluate impact with partial snow cover tiles 03/2010: tile/mosaic in official COSMO code, documentation 09/2010: results of evaluation

17 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 COLOBOC, some related aspects New task proposed by DWD to include sea-ice model NCAR Community Land Model implemented within COSMO (ETHZ) Will be tested in climate mode, possibly in weather mode too (but not part of COLOBOC) Standard coupler within COSMO code would help using and maintaining externally developed code Work done within CLM-Community (OASIS), discussion within WG6 started

18 Jean-Marie Bettems | COSMO GM 2008 Thank you for attention! Given the field experiment in the salt mine yesterday evening, one should consider extending the depth of TERRA to at least 110m below ground