WRF
The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model is the meteorology model used in its version 3.5.1 (Skamarock et al. 2008) with the ARW solver. It is a fully compressible, Eulerian and nonhydrostatic model. It is conservative for scalar variables. The model uses terrain-following, hydrostatic-pressure vertical coordinate with the top of the model being a constant pressure surface. The horizontal grid is the Arakawa-C grid.
The model is configured with four nested domains that have grids of 27, 9, 3 and 1 km, with a one-way nesting. D3 corresponds to Catalonia (NE Spain) and covers 93x93 grid cells while D4 corresponds to the metropolitan area of Barcelona and covers 93x114 grid cells. The vertical grid is common to all the domains with 31 vertical levels, 20 below 1500m approximately and domain top at 100hPa. The distribution of the vertical layers, higher resolution in the lower levels, is a common practice, thus enabling low-level flow details to be captured. Initial and boundary conditions are provided by the Catalonian Meteorological Service (SMC) every 6 hours, so boundary conditions can be updated at this time interval. WRF is one of the most updated models and nowadays is used in numerical forecast with high reliability. The model solves primitive equations of atmosphere using different physic parameterizations as for example for boundary layer, surface layer, radiation or cumulus.
The options chosen in the configuration are included in table 2:
| Microphysics | New Thompson |
| Radiation | Short wave:Dudhia Long wave:RRTM |
| Surface layer | Similarity theory (MM5) |
| Land-surface model | Noah Land-Surface Model |
| Boundary Layer | Yonsei University (YSU) |
| Cumulus | Grell 3D |
References and links
Skamarock WC, Klemp JB, Dudhia, J, Gill DO, Barker DM, Wang W., Powers, JG. 2008. A description of the advanced research WRF version 3. NCAR. Tech. Rep. TN-4751STR, 113pp. NCAR: Boulder, Colorado, USA.More information:
http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/