Please login first
Sensitivity assessment of WRF parameterizations over Europe
, , *
1  Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Western Macedonia, Greece
2  Department of Environmental Engineering, University of Western Macedonia, Greece

Abstract:

The evaluation of parameterization schemes in the WRF model for estimating temperature and precipitation during January and July 2015 is assessed all over Europe running in multinesting mode with grid resolutions of 108Km and 36Km. A step-wise decision approach is followed, beginning with 18 simulations for the various microphysics schemes followed by 45 more, concerning all of the model’s PBL, Cumulus, Long-wave, Short-wave and Land Surface schemes. Model evaluation is performed using gridded precipitation and temperature data from the ECA&D 0.25deg regular grid. The best performing scheme at each step is chosen by integrating the entropy weighting method ‘Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution’ (TOPSIS). The results suggest that different climate variables are found to be sensitive to different physical parameterizations. Furthermore, improvement of the model’s performance is possible and highly region-related. The concluding scheme set consists of the Mansell-Ziegler-Bruning microphysics scheme, the Bougeault-Lacarrere PBL scheme, the Kain-Fritsch cumulus scheme and the RRTMG schemes for short-wave and long-wave radiation and a seasonal-variable sensitive option for the Land Surface scheme. Regarding 2m-temperature, a significant reduction of the maximum daily bias is achieved. Precipitation forecast is also improved reaching a reduction of the maximum daily bias for both months studied.

Keywords: parameterization schemes, WRF, sensitivity, multinesting, TOPSIS, mesoscale processes
Top