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Evaluation of WRF performance for depicting orographically-induced gravity waves in the stratosphere 12 June 2007 Douglas C. Hahn Atmospheric Impacts Section Space Vehicles Directorate Hanscom AFB, MA Outline Introduction Case Study


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Evaluation of WRF performance for depicting orographically-induced gravity waves in the stratosphere

12 June 2007

Douglas C. Hahn

Atmospheric Impacts Section Space Vehicles Directorate Hanscom AFB, MA

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12 June 2007 2

Outline

  • Introduction
  • Case Study
  • Model Simulations
  • Results
  • Conclusions
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12 June 2007 3

Introduction

  • Internal Gravity (Buoyancy) Waves

– Means for transporting energy and momentum to upper atmosphere – Important in the formation of high altitude turbulence (Crooks, 1965)

  • Understanding Gravity Waves

– Boulder Windstorm, 11 January 1972 (Lilly & Zipser, 1972) – Several analytic and 2-D numerical simulations – Control of model dissipation and inclusion of an upper boundary

condition (Klemp & Lilly, 1978)

– Little effort beyond describing trapped lee waves and rotors (i.e. low

levels)

  • High Resolution Simulations using prognostic models

– Colorado Windstorm, 9 January 1989 (Clark, et al., 1994) – Intercomparison of several prognostic models by Doyle, et al. (2000) – Need for increased vertical and horizontal resolutions to capture

mountain generated gravity waves

– Applying WRF to T-Rex cases (Koch, et al., 2006)

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12 June 2007 4

Case Study

  • Field Campaign 22 November – 5 December 2004

Observatoire de Haute Provence (OHP) , France (44º N, 5º 42’ E)

Special Observation Period: 23-24 November 2004

  • “Light” Mistral Conditions

Measurements by Thermosonde (Brown, et al., 1982) and SCIDAR (Fuchs, et al., 1998)

  • Indicated turbulence occurring near 13 km around 0000 UTC 24 November

No convection or strong wind shear present to account for gravity wave activity present

Summary diagram depicting features of the mistral wind (from Jiang, et al., 2003)

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12 June 2007 5

Model Simulations

WRF ARW Core Version 2.1.1 (November 2005)

  • Model Set-up and Physical Parameterizations

– Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) Joint Operational Testbed (July 2005)

  • AFWA Control version

– Horizontal: 45 km with nests of 15 and 5 km – Vertical: 42 Eta levels (model top @ 50 hPa)

  • Enhanced Resolution version

– Horizontal: 36 km with nests of 12, 4 and 1.3 km – Vertical: 82 Eta levels (model top @ 10 hPa) – Inclusion of gravity wave absorbing upper boundary condition (UBC)

  • Tested with different damping coefficients

– Tested without vertical velocity damping (w-damping)

  • Horizontal grid/nests centered on observation area (OHP)

– Runs initialized with 1º NCEP GFS data – 48 h simulation from 0000 UTC 23 November 2004

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12 June 2007 6

Model Simulations

Upper Boundary Condition

  • Gravity Wave Absorbing (Diffusion/Sponge) Layer (Skamarock, et al., 2005)

– Increase diffusion in horizontal/vertical by increasing eddy viscosities as

the top of the model is approached (Klemp & Lilly, 1978)

⎟ ⎟ ⎠ ⎞ ⎜ ⎜ ⎝ ⎛ − Δ Δ = 2 cos

2

π γ

d top g dh

z z z t x K ⎟ ⎟ ⎠ ⎞ ⎜ ⎜ ⎝ ⎛ − Δ Δ = 2 cos

2

π γ

d top g dv

z z z t z K 1 . 01 . ≤ ≤

g

γ

Horizontal: Vertical: Typically,

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12 June 2007 7

Model Simulations

  • Gravity wave absorbing layer tests for enhanced resolution

WRF-ARW simulations

– Damping layer depth (zd) constant, 5 km

  • Deeper layer would intrude on a greater part of the

domain in the stratosphere

– Damping coefficients (γg) tested for 0.01, 0.04 and 0.08

  • Horizontal examples :

γg=0.01, 0 ≤ Kdh ≤ 72000 m2 s-1 γg=0.04, 0 ≤ Kdh ≤ 288000 m2 s-1 γg=0.08, 0 ≤ Kdh ≤ 576000 m2 s-1

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12 June 2007 8

Model Simulations

Vertical Velocity Damping (w-damping)

– Improves model robustness for operational and semi-

  • perational applications

– Prevents strong updraft cores (when timesteps might be too

large)

– Decreasing timestep should allow runs without w-damping

  • Typically only horizontal grid is used to determine

timesteps (and avoid violating CFL criterion)

– WRF-ARW documentation: Δt = 6 * Δx (in km)

  • Must also recognize impacts from increased vertical

resolution

– Tested by Koch, et. al. (2006) – Smaller timesteps were chosen from beginning to test

simulations with and without w-damping

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12 June 2007 9

Results

Grid Point Verification Statistics

10 100 1000 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 Potential Temperature RMSE Pressure (hPa)

RMSE of Potential Temperature

  • 24 h Simulation vs. GFS Analysis valid 0000 UTC 24 November
  • AFWA Control ARW (blue) and Enhanced Resolution ARW (red)
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12 June 2007 10

Results

Grid Point Verification Statistics

RMSE (left) and Mean Error (right) of Total Wind

  • 24 h Simulation vs. GFS Analysis valid 0000 UTC 24 November
  • AFWA Control ARW (blue) and Enhanced Resolution ARW (red)

10 100 1000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Total Wind RMSE Pressure (hPa) 10 100 1000

  • 1.5
  • 1
  • 0.5

0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 Total Wind Mean Error Pressure (hPa)

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12 June 2007 11

Results

Comparison with Radiosonde

Launch Time: 23 Nov 04, 2335 UTC (~24 hr forecast)

5 10 15 20 25 30 200 210 220 230 240 250 260 270 280 290 Temperature (K) Altitude (km)

Temperature and Wind Speed Profiles

  • Enhanced Resolution ARW model profiles (red) extracted from

36 km grid using balloon trajectories

Launch Time: 23 Nov 04, 2335 UTC (~24 hr forecast)

5 10 15 20 25 30 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 Wind Speed (m/s) Altitude (km)

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12 June 2007 12

Results

Enhanced Resolution ARW Cross Sections

  • Domain of 1.3 km inner nest of enhanced resolution ARW model (left)

Line denotes vertical cross sections used for evaluation

Red dot marks location of OHP

  • Cross section from surface to 10 km (right) indicating the presence of orographically

generated gravity waves in the 24 h simulation valid 0000 UTC 24 November

Vertical line is location of OHP

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12 June 2007 13

Results

Enhanced Resolution ARW Cross Sections

  • Horizontal Cross Sections at 13 km for 24 h simulation valid

0000 UTC 24 November

– Dot indicates location of OHP

No UBC UBC, γg = 0.01

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12 June 2007 14

Results

Enhanced Resolution ARW Cross Sections

  • Comparison between gravity wave absorbing layer using

damping coefficients (γg) of 0.01 and 0.04

– Vertical line is location of OHP

γg = 0.01 γg = 0.04

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12 June 2007 15

Results

Enhanced Resolution ARW Cross Sections

  • Comparison between gravity wave absorbing layer using

damping coefficients (γg) of 0.04 and 0.08

– Vertical line is location of OHP

γg = 0.08 γg = 0.04

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12 June 2007 16

Conclusions

  • Mountain generated gravity (i.e. buoyancy) waves were simulated by

the enhanced resolution ARW version

– Not a particularly strong case over OHP where observations were

made

  • Unclear if increasing damping coefficient (γg) above 0.04 improves the

effectiveness of the gravity wave absorbing layer and simulated wave structure.

– Need more choices for UBC

  • Elimination of w-damping led to small differences in simulated vertical

velocity

– Continue without w-damping in order to eliminate one source of

model dissipation

  • Forecasts would be difficult to operationally implement

– Stratospheric Real-Time Turbulence Model (RTTM) (Kaplan, et al.,

2006)

– Dynamic Solution Adaptive Grid Algorithm (DSAGA) (Xiao, et al.,

2005)