Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Horizontal Resolution (horizontal + resolution)
Selected AbstractsMeasurement sampling and scaling for deep montane snow depth dataHYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES, Issue 4 2006S. R. Fassnacht Abstract The resolution of snow depth measurements was scaled from a nominal horizontal resolution of approximately 1·5 m to 3, 5, 10, 20, and 30 m using averaging (AVG) and resampling with a uniform random stratified sampling (RSS) scheme. The raw snow depth values were computed from airborne light detection and ranging data by differencing summer elevation measurements from winter snow surface elevations. Three montane study sites from the NASA Cold Lands Processes Experiment, each covering an 1100 m × 1100 m area, were used. To examine scaling, log,log semi-variograms with 50 log-width bins were created for both of the different subsetting methods, i.e. RSS and AVG. From the raw data, a scale break, going from a structured to a nearly spatially random system, was observed in each of the log,log variograms. For each site, the scale break was still detectable at slightly greater than the resampling resolution for the RSS scheme, but at approximately twice the subsetting resolution for the AVG scheme. The resolution required to identify the scale break was still from 5 to 10 m, depending upon the location and sampling method. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Sensitivity of an Arctic regional climate model to the horizontal resolution during winter: implications for aerosol simulationINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, Issue 11 2005Eric Girard Abstract Our ability to properly simulate current climate and its future change depends upon the exactitude of the physical processes that are parameterized on the one hand, and on model configuration on the other hand. In this paper, we focus on the latter and investigate the effect of the horizontal grid resolution on the simulation of a month of January over the Arctic. A limited-area numerical climate model is used to simulate the month of January 1990 over a grid that includes the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. Two grid resolutions are used: 50 km and 100 km. Results show that finer details appear for regional circulation, temperature, and humidity when increasing horizontal resolution. This is particularly true for continental and sea ice boundaries, which are much better resolved by high-resolution model simulations. The Canadian Archipelago and rivers in northern Russia appear to benefit the most from higher horizontal resolution. High-resolution simulations capture some frozen rivers and narrow straits between islands. Therefore, much colder surface air temperature is simulated over these areas. Precipitation is generally increased in those areas and over topography due to a better representation of surface heterogeneities when increasing resolution. Large-scale atmospheric circulation is substantially changed when horizontal resolution is increased. Feedback processes occur between surface air temperature change over heterogeneous surfaces and atmospheric circulation. High-resolution simulations develop a stronger polar vortex. The mean sea-level pressure increases over the western Arctic and Iceland and decreases over the eastern Arctic. This circulation leads to a substantial cooling of the eastern Arctic and enhanced synoptic activity over the Arctic associated with an intensification of the baroclinic zone. Aerosol mass loading, which is simulated explicitly in this model, is significantly altered by the grid resolution change with the largest differences in aerosol concentration over areas where precipitation and atmospheric circulation are the most affected. The implications of this sensitivity study to the evaluation of indirect radiative effects of anthropogenic aerosols are discussed. Copyright © 2005 Royal Meteorological Society. [source] Enhanced resolution modelling study on anthropogenic climate change: changes in extremes of the hydrological cycleINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, Issue 7 2002Reinhard Voss Abstract Changes in variability and extremes of the hydrological cycle are studied in two 30 year simulations using a general circulation model at high horizontal resolution. The simulations represent the present-day climate and a period in which the radiative forcing corresponds to a doubling of the present-day concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases. In most regions and seasons the probability density function of daily precipitation experiences a stretching associated with a higher probability of heavy precipitation events in the warmer climate. Whereas extremely long wet spells show only moderate changes, the extremely long dry spells are extended at middle latitudes over most land areas. At high latitudes the changes in annual maximum river runoff are mainly controlled by changes in snow budget. Eight out of 14 selected major rivers show a statistically significant change in 10 year return values of the annual maximum discharge. In two cases a significant decrease is found and in six cases there is a significant increase. Copyright © 2002 Royal Meteorological Society [source] Assimilation of radar reflectivity into the LM COSMO model with a high horizontal resolutionMETEOROLOGICAL APPLICATIONS, Issue 4 2006Z. Sokol Abstract An assimilation of radar reflectivity into a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model with a horizontal resolution of 2.8 km is presented and applied to three severe convective events. The suggested assimilation method takes into account differences between the model and radar-derived precipitation in modifying vertical profiles of water vapour mixing ratio in each model time step by the nudging approach. Version 3.9 of the LM COSMO (Local Model COSMO) ,NWP model used in this study includes the explicit formulation of the cloud and rain processes involved. Two variants of the assimilation technique are designed and outputs of their implementation are compared. The first variant makes use of the ground data only, while the second utilises vertical profiles of precipitation water. Both variants provide an improvement of precipitation forecast in comparison with outputs of the control run without assimilation procedures applied. When the assimilated radar data indicate initial precipitation near an expected storm, the NWP model is capable of forecasting basic features of the storm development two to three hours ahead. Three case studies are presented. In one, the assimilation method that takes into account the vertical structure of the precipitation water yields better results than the others which utilise ground data only. However, for the remaining two case studies both types of the assimilation method produce comparable results. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Wind speed-up in the Dover Straits with the Met Office New Dynamics ModelMETEOROLOGICAL APPLICATIONS, Issue 3 2003Rachel Anne Capon It is part of British sailing and forecasting folklore that the wind speed increases in the Dover Straits when there is an established wind-flow ,westerly/south-westerly or easterly/north-easterly ,along the English Channel. However the underlying mechanism of the phenomenon is unclear. We have used the Met Office ,New Dynamics' mesoscale model to perform a case study on an occasion when this phenomenon was observed in the Channel but not forecast well by the operational model, UM 4.5. Results are presented showing the sensitivity of forecasts to horizontal resolution (down to 2 km) and to vertical resolution. We probe the physical mechanism of the Channel jet by altering the surrounding orography and the land or sea surface roughness. Both the orography and the surface roughness are shown to influence the jet formation. Copyright © 2003 Royal Meteorological Society [source] Storm prediction over Europe using the ECMWF Ensemble Prediction SystemMETEOROLOGICAL APPLICATIONS, Issue 3 2002Roberto Buizza Three severe storms caused great damage in Europe in December 1999. The first storm hit Denmark and Germany on 3 and 4 December, and the other two storms crossed France and Germany on 26 and 28 December. In this study, the performance of the Ensemble Prediction System (EPS) at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) in predicting these intense storms is investigated. Results indicate that the EPS gave early indications of possible severe storm occurrence, and was especially useful when the deterministic TL319L60 forecasts issued on successive days were highly inconsistent. These results indicate that the EPS is a valuable tool for assessing quantitatively the risk of severe weather and issuing early warnings of possible disruptions. The impact of an increase of the ensemble system horizontal resolution (TL255 integration from a TL511 analysis instead of the operational TL159 integration from a TL319 analysis) on the system performance is also investigated. Results show that the resolution increase enhances the ensemble performance in predicting the position and the intensity of intense storms. Copyright © 2002 Royal Meteorological Society. [source] Diagnosis and formulation of heterogeneous background-error covariances at the mesoscaleTHE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 651 2010Thibaut Montmerle Abstract This study focuses on diagnosing variations of background-error covariances between precipitating and non-precipitating areas, and on presenting a heterogeneous covariance formulation to represent these variations in a variational framework. The context of this work is the assimilation of observations linked to precipitation (radar data especially) in the AROME model, which has been running operationally at Météo-France since December 2008 over French territory with a 2.5 km horizontal resolution. This system uses multivariate background-error covariances deduced from an ensemble-based method. At first, such statistics have been computed for 17 precipitating cases using an ensemble of AROME forecasts coupled with an ALADIN ensemble assimilation. Results, obtained from 3 h forecast differences performed separately for non-precipitating and precipitating columns, display large discrepancies in error variances, correlation lengths and the correlations between humidity, temperature and divergence errors. These results argue in favour of including heterogeneous background-error covariances in AROME incremental 3D-Var, allowing different covariances to be used in regions with different meteorological patterns. Such a method enables us to get increments more adequately structured in those regions, and thus potentially to make better use of observations in a data assimilation system. The implementation consists of expressing the analysis increment as the sum of two terms, one for precipitating areas and the other for non-precipitating areas, making use of a mask that defines rainy regions. This implies a doubling in the size of the control variable and of the gradient of the cost function. The feasibility of this method is shown through experiments with four isolated observations. Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society [source] An improved PDF cloud scheme for climate simulationsTHE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 651 2010Akira Kuwano-Yoshida Abstract An efficient grid-scale cloud scheme for climate simulation is implemented in the atmospheric general circulation model for the Earth Simulator (AFES). The new cloud scheme uses statistical partial condensation using joint-Gaussian probability distribution functions (PDFs) of the liquid water potential temperature and total water content, with standard deviations estimated by the moist Mellor,Yamada level-2 turbulence scheme. It also adopts improved closure parameters based on large-eddy simulations and a revised mixing length that varies with the stability and turbulent kinetic energy. These changes not only enable better representation of low-level boundary layer clouds, but also improve the atmospheric boundary layer structure. Sensitivity experiments for vertical resolution suggest that O(100,200 m) intervals are adequate to represent well-mixed boundary layers with the new scheme. The new scheme performs well at relatively low horizontal resolution (about 150 km), although inversion layers near the coast become more intense at a higher horizontal resolution (about 50 km). Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society [source] An observing-system experiment with ground-based GPS zenith total delay data using HIRLAM 3D-Var in the absence of satellite dataTHE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 650 2010Reima Eresmaa Abstract Ground-based receiver networks of the Global Positioning System (GPS) provide observations of atmospheric water vapour with a high temporal and horizontal resolution. Variational data assimilation allows researchers to make use of zenith total delay (ZTD) observations, which comprise the atmospheric effects on microwave signal propagation. An observing-system experiment (OSE) is performed to demonstrate the impact of GPS ZTD observations on the output of the High Resolution Limited Area Model (HIRLAM). The GPS ZTD observations for the OSE are provided by the EUMETNET GPS Water Vapour Programme, and they are assimilated using three-dimensional variational data assimilation (3D-Var). The OSE covers a five-week period during the late summer of 2008. In parallel with GPS ZTD data assimilation in the regular mode, the impact of a static bias-correction algorithm for the GPS ZTD data is also assessed. Assimilation of GPS ZTD data, without bias correction of any kind, results in a systematic increase in the forecast water-vapour content, temperature and tropospheric relative topography. A slightly positive impact is shown in terms of decreased forecast-error standard deviation of lower and middle tropospheric humidity and lower tropospheric geopotential height. Moreover, verification of categorical forecasts of 12 h accumulated precipitation shows a positive impact. The application of the static bias-correction scheme is positively verified in the case of the mean forecast error of lower tropospheric humidity and when relatively high precipitation accumulations are considered. Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society [source] Can mesoscale models reproduce meandering motions?THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 648 2010Danijel Belu Abstract The influence of meandering flow on dispersion of pollutants is frequently under-represented in dispersion models. In terms of measurements, meandering is primarily associated with time-scales between the turbulence and the applied averaging time, which is usually 1 h. The related spatial scales thus range roughly from 102 to 104 m (referred to here as submesoscales). As the state-of-the-art mesoscale models should be capable of reproducing flow features on scales larger than the turbulence, and as the meandering-generating mechanisms are not fully understood yet, it is useful to examine if the mesoscale models can reproduce meandering. For that purpose, the WRF/Chem model at 1/3 km horizontal resolution is used to simulate a weak-wind night during the CASES99 experiment. The measurements are used for detailed model verification. The model with its typical set-up fails to reproduce the variability at submesoscales and the locus of the under-representation is traced to too-strong horizontal diffusion. Reducing or removing the model diffusion allows the appearance of the submeso variability, whose spectral properties and the resulting plume behaviour agree well with the measurements. The linear correlation between the simulations with reproduced variability and the measurements is low, as is the case between two simulations with only slightly different set-up. The conclusion is that mesoscale models are able to reproduce the strength of variability and the effects of meandering, but only with reduced or removed horizontal diffusion. The question arises whether it is possible to obtain a linear correlation, i.e. to correctly reproduce individual modes at these scales at all. Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society [source] The dynamics of heat lows over flat terrainTHE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 637 2008Thomas Spengler Abstract The numerical model for a heat low developed by Rácz and Smith is extended to include a representation of radiative heating and cooling. The model is run with a higher horizontal resolution than the original version and is used to investigate additional dynamical aspects of the structure and evolution of a heat low over a subcontinental- or continental-scale circular island surrounded by sea. Of particular interest is the diurnal and day-to-day evolution of the upper- and lower-level circulations and the degree of balance that exists in these. The heat low is surmounted by an anticyclone, the development of which is closely tied to the outflow branch of the sea breeze. The anticyclone has a much smaller diurnal variation than the heat low and, unlike the heat low is largely in balance, except in the region affected by the upward-propagating gravity wave induced by the inland-penetrating sea breeze. There is a strong analogy to certain aspects of tropical cyclones, which have a warm core, a shallow unbalanced boundary layer, and which are surmounted also by an anticyclone. Principles governing the absolute angular momentum budget are the same as those relating to the tropical cyclones and to the zonal-mean flow over Antarctica. Implications of these principles for obtaining a realistic steady state in long-term integrations of axisymmetric models are discussed. Copyright © 2008 Royal Meteorological Society [source] Ensemble simulations of the cold European winter of 2005-2006THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 636 2008A. A. Scaife Abstract There is only limited understanding of the processes driving year-to-year variability in European winter climate and the skill of seasonal forecasts for Europe in winter is generally low. The winter of 2005-2006 is a useful case-study because it was the coldest winter in large parts of western Europe for over a decade, and the coldest in central England since 1995-1996. Here, we present results of experiments with a range of general circulation models to investigate the importance of both the Atlantic Ocean and stratospheric circulation in producing the unusually cold winter of 2005-2006. We use models with different combinations of horizontal and stratospheric vertical resolution, allowing the sensitivity of the response to model formulation to be tested. The response to Atlantic sea-surface temperature (SST) anomalies is improved in a more recent model with higher horizontal resolution. The results show that both Atlantic SSTs and the January 2006 sudden stratospheric warming are likely to have contributed to the cold 2005-2006 European winter. © Crown Copyright 2008. Reproduced with the permission of HMSO. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. [source] A comparison of cloud-resolving model simulations of trade wind cumulus with aircraft observations taken during RICOTHE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 624 2007S. J. Abel Abstract This paper presents results from simulations of trade wind cumulus with the Met Office Large Eddy Model (LEM) based on observed environmental profiles from the Rain In Cumulus over the Ocean (RICO) field experiment. Comparisons of updraught core parameters are made with the in situ data collected onboard the three research aircraft that participated in RICO. The default set-up of the LEM was unable to produce sufficient amounts of rainwater content when compared to measurements by the aircraft. As a main aim of RICO was to quantify the importance of precipitation in the trade cumulus regime, we test the sensitivity of the model to changes in the rain microphysics, the large-scale forcing, and horizontal resolution. By changing these model variables we are able to obtain reasonably good agreement with the observations of updraught core vertical velocity, cloud and rainwater contents. Furthermore, the LEM produces comparable surface precipitation rates to those derived from radar measurements during RICO in a previous study. This gives us some confidence in the ability of the LEM to simulate realistic precipitating trade cumulus. Copyright © 2007 Royal Meteorological Society [source] The assimilation of SSM/I and TMI rainfall rates in the ECMWF 4D-Var systemTHE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 606 2005Jean-françois Mahfouf Abstract A recent version of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts four-dimensional variational (4D-Var) assimilation system (40 km horizontal resolution with a 12-hour window) is used to examine the comparative impact of including satellite-derived rainfall rates from SSM/I and TMI radiometers within the tropics. The methodology is similar to the one proposed by Marécal and Mahfouf (2002) where Total Column Water Vapour (TCWV) retrievals in rainy areas from a simplified 1D-Var assimilation are introduced in the 4D-Var system. An improved methodology for the estimation of rain rate retrieval errors proposed by Bauer et al. (2002) is used. Three one-month experiments are undertaken: a control run (no rain rate assimilation), a TMI run (assimilation of TMI-derived rain rates) and a SSM/I run (assimilation of SSM/I-derived rain rates). The corrections of TCWV in rainy areas introduced in the 4D-Var are very similar between SSM/I and TMI because they are dominated by the ,no rain' information. The impact of TMI and SSM/I assimilations is positive on forecast scores, both in the extratropics and in the tropics. Results from the SSM/I run show a larger positive impact which tends to demonstrate the benefit of the increased number of data from the SSM/I with respect to TMI. Copyright © 2005 Royal Meteorological Society. [source] Coriolis effects in mesoscale flows with sharp changes in surface conditionsTHE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 603 2004J. C. R. Hunt Abstract A general linearized ,shallow-layer' perturbation model, where the approximately neutral lower layer of thickness h0 is situated below a stable upper layer (i.e. an inversion with temperature change ,T), is developed for steady, mesoscale atmospheric flows over low-lying topography whose height is less than h0. With the Coriolis parameter f, sharp changes in surface conditions (surface roughness, terrain elevation, heat flux) are modelled as a distributed body force through the lower layer. The Froude number of this layer is small. Typical cases of mesoscale discontinuities are examined. The results are compared with those of a continuously stratified model and observations, and with numerical mesoscale model results for a meteorological case-study over the Dover Straits region of the English Channel. The main results are: (i) If the wind direction is parallel to the edge-line separating the change in surface roughness, there are marked increases and decreases in these coastal winds whose maxima can occur over the sea within a distance of order h0(,1 km) of a coast. The strength of these wind ,jets', which do not occur in the absence of Coriolis force, decrease away from the edge-line gradually over transverse length-scales of the order of the Rossby deformation radius . Changes to surface roughness lead to an increase in the wind speed perturbation in the downwind direction until limited by non-linear effects. When the wind is at an angle to a roughness change or coast, the maxima occur at the coastline. (ii) Where there are sharp changes in the orientation of contours of constant roughness length (e.g. at capes or bays on the coastline or wakes of high-drag areas), ,detached' jets are formed in the downwind direction. (iii) Changes in surface elevation at a coast produce effects different from those of roughness; a positive wind jet forms parallel to the coast in the direction of the wind when the coast is on the right (looking downwind) and a negative jet when the coast is on the left. These jets do not increase in strength along the flow and do not persist downwind. (iv) Coriolis effects also determine how the inversion height varies near coastlines and surface roughness changes; for example, increasing/decreasing inland over a distance LR when stable airflow approaches from the sea and the coast is on the right/left of an observer looking downwind (opposite in the southern hemisphere). This mechanism is consistent with observed increasing/decreasing cloudiness inland from a coast. (v) Other effects occur where the surface elevation changes gradually over a distance of order LR (e.g. a wide, shallow valley); frictional effects are comparable with buoyancy and Coriolis forces, and flows perpendicular to the elevation change are deflected to the left (in the northern hemisphere), as observed in the Rhine valley. (vi) The shallow-layer model simulates the major features of the low-level flow field computed using the numerical mesoscale model with a horizontal resolution of 2 km, i.e. of order h0. Broad features were captured using a coarser resolution of 12 km. (vii) The analysis provides a method of estimating errors associated with finite grid size in numerical mesoscale models. Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society [source] Numerical simulations of the 12,13 August 2002 flooding event in eastern GermanyTHE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 600 2004G. Zängl Abstract In this paper, high-resolution numerical simulations of the 12,13 August 2002 flooding event in eastern Germany are presented. The simulations are performed with the Penn State/National Center for Atmospheric Research mesoscale model MM5 in a four-domain configuration with a finest horizontal resolution of 1 km. Sensitivity experiments are performed with coarser resolutions (3 and 9 km), with different cloud microphysical parametrizations and with a different date of initialization. Moreover, tests with 1 km resolution but the smoothed topography of the 9 km runs are conducted in order to isolate the contribution of the model topography to the differences between the 1 km runs and the 9 km runs. The results show that the high-resolution runs reproduce the observed structure of the precipitation field very well. In particular, the location of the rainfall maximum is correct to within 15 km. The quantitative agreement between model results and observations is fairly good in regions with light to moderate rain, but large amounts of precipitation tend to be underpredicted. For observed 36-hour rainfall accumulations exceeding 200 mm, the negative bias typically ranges between 15 and 30 Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society. [source] Some considerations on the interpretation of seabed images based on commercial 3D seismic in the Faroe-Shetland ChannelBASIN RESEARCH, Issue 1 2005J. Bulat Commercial three-dimensional (3D) seismic surveys now cover much of the continental slope and basin floor areas of the Faroe-Shetland Channel. A mosaic of the seabed picks derived from these data sets and enhancement with visualisation techniques has resulted in detailed relief images of the seabed that testify to the action of a number of sedimentary processes such as glaciation, downslope and alongslope processes. The wealth of detail in these images is remarkable and extremely valuable for the identification and interpretation of seabed features. However, the level of detail can seduce the interpreter into treating the image purely as an aerial photograph. The interpreter needs to understand the limitations and artefacts inherent in such images to use them appropriately. This paper will present the major artefacts observed in the images and how certain aspects of 3D seismic survey acquisition and processing have contributed to their presence. The vertical and horizontal resolution of the images will also be discussed. Although primarily focused on seabed imagery these comments are equally pertinent to the application of 3D seismic surveys for shallower objectives than for which they were primarily designed. [source] On the use of the super compact scheme for spatial differencing in numerical models of the atmosphereTHE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 609 2005V. Esfahanian Abstract The ,Super Compact Finite-Difference Method' (SCFDM) is applied to spatial differencing of some prototype linear and nonlinear geophysical fluid dynamics problems. An alternative form of the SCFDM relations for spatial derivatives is derived. The sixth-order SCFDM is compared in detail with the conventional fourth-order compact and the second-order centred differencing. For the frequency of linear inertia-gravity waves on different numerical grids (Arakawa's A,E and Randall's Z) related to the Rossby adjustment process, the sixth-order SCFDM shows a substantial improvement on the conventional methods. For the Jacobians involved in vorticity advection by non-divergent flow and in the Bolin,Charney balance equation, a general framework, valid for every finite-difference method, is derived to present the discrete forms of the Jacobians. It is found that the sixth-order SCFDM provides a noticeably more accurate representation of the wave-number distribution of the Jacobians, when compared with the conventional methods. The problem of reconstructing the stream-function field from the vorticity field on a sphere is also considered. For the Rossby,Haurwitz wave, the computation of a normalized global error at different horizontal resolutions in longitude and latitude directions shows that the sixth-order SCFDM can markedly improve on the fourth-order compact. The sixth-order SCFDM is thus proposed as a viable method to improve the accuracy of finite-difference models of the atmosphere. Copyright © 2005 Royal Meteorological Society. [source] The parametrization of drag induced by stratified flow over anisotropic orographyTHE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 568 2000J. F. Scinocca Abstract A new parametrization of drag arising from the flow over unresolved topography (UT) in a general-circulation model (GCM) is presented. It is comprised of three principle components: a parametrization of the source spectrum and drag associated with freely propagating hydrostatic gravity waves in the absence of rotation, a parametrization of the drag associated with low-level wave breaking, and a parametrization of low-level drag associated with upstream blocking and lee-vortex dynamics. Novel features of the scheme include: a new procedure for defining the UT in each GCM grid cell which takes account of the GCM resolution and includes only the scales represented by the parametrization scheme, a new method of representing the azimuthal distribution of vertical momentum flux by two waves whose direction and magnitude systematically vary with the flow direction and with the anisotropy of the UT in each GCM grid cell, and a new application of form drag in the lowest levels which can change the direction of the low-level flow so that it is more parallel to unresolved two-dimensional topographic ridges. The new scheme is tested in the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis third generation atmospheric GCM at horizontal resolutions of T47 and T63. Five-year seasonal means of present-day climate show that the new scheme improves mean sea level pressures (or mass distribution) and improves the tropospheric circulation when compared with the gravity-wave drag scheme used currently in the GCM. The benefits are most pronounced during northern hemisphere winter. It is also found that representing the azimuthal distribution of the momentum flux of the freely propagating gravity-wave field with two waves rather than just one allows 30-50% more gravity-wave momentum flux up into the middle atmosphere, depending on the season. The additional momentum flux into the middle atmosphere is expected to have a beneficial impact on GCMs that employ a more realistic representation of the stratosphere. [source] A high-resolution modelling case study of a severe weather event over New ZealandATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE LETTERS, Issue 3 2008Stuart Webster Abstract In this article, the ability of the Met Office Unified Model to simulate the severe weather over the South Island of New Zealand, on 8 January 2004 is investigated. Simulations were run at horizontal resolutions of between 60 and 1 km. The modelled broad-scale rainfall and wind features, most notably the area-averaged accumulated rainfall, were found to converge with resolution. At the highest resolutions, all the observed rainfall and wind features of this event were captured well by the model. Even the 12-km-resolution model is able to resolve the broad elongated ridge-like structure of the Southern Alps and qualitatively capture the main features of the rainfall and wind fields. Copyright © 2008 Royal Meteorological Society and Crown Copyright 2008, published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | ||||||||||