Mesoscale Modeling Jon Schrage Summer 2009

WRF-“Weather Research and Forecasting” Developed by: – National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) the Forecast Systems Laboratory (FSL), – the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA), – the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), – the University of Oklahoma (OU), – the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)

WRF Successor to the MM5 model suitable for applications across scales ranging from meters to thousands of kilometers

WRF EMS WRF Environmental Modeling System – incorporates dynamical cores from NCAR Advanced Research WRF (ARW) NCEP non-hydrostatic mesoscale model (NMM) – a single end-to-end forecasting package with all the capability of the NCEP and NCAR packages are retained – installation, configuration, and running of the NCEP and NCAR versions have been simplified to encourage its use by forecast offices, private industry, and the University community

WRF EMS Developed to meet the goals of the SOO Science and Training Resource Coordinator (SOO STRC): 1. To improve the knowledge and use of NWP forecast models and issues at the local level 2. To advance the forecasting process through an improved understanding of mesoscale atmospheric processes and the use of non-traditional diagnostic tools 3. To increase participation among the WFOs and other agencies in developing and running NWP systems to examine local forecast problems

netCDF files The initial and boundary conditions of the WRF model are stored in netCDF (.nc) format. Can be manipulated by lots of software packages—we will be using NCL (NCAR Command Language).