Update on the Regional Modeling System

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Update on the Regional Modeling System
NASA Roses Meeting April 13, 2007
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Supported by the Northwest Modeling
Consortiumthe 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.

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36 km
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12 km
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4 km
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A Few of the Major Efforts and Improvements this
Year
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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.

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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.

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New UW WRF
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Example of Old MM5 vs WRF Verifications
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March 1 Convergence Zone Event
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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.

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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)

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Direction QC
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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.

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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.

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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 reasonsincluding 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

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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) versionwhich
  is now running (Brian Ancell lead)

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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

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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

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The END
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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

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