TY - JOUR
T1 - Cold Season Performance of the NU-WRF Regional Climate Model in the Great Lakes Region
AU - Notaro, Michael
AU - Zhong, Yafang
AU - Xue, Pengfei
AU - Peters-Lidard, Christa
AU - Cruz, Carlos
AU - Kemp, Eric
AU - Kristovich, David
AU - Kulie, Mark
AU - Wang, Junming
AU - Huang, Chenfu
AU - Vavrus, Stephen J.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - As Earth’s largest collection of fresh water, the Laurentian Great Lakes have enormous ecological and socio-economic value. Their basin has become a regional hotspot of climatic and limnological change, potentially threatening its vital natural resources. Consequentially, there is a need to assess the current state of climate models regarding their performance across the Great Lakes region and develop the next generation of high-resolution regional climate models to address complex limnological processes and lake-atmosphere interactions. In response to this need, the current paper focuses on the generation and analysis of a 20-member ensemble of 3-km National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)-Unified Weather Research and Forecasting (NU-WRF) simulations for the 2014-2015 cold season. The study aims to identify the model’s strengths and weaknesses; optimal configuration for the region; and the impacts of different physics parameterizations, coupling to a 1D lake model, time-variant lake-surface temperatures, and spectral nudging. Several key biases are identified in the cold-season simulations for the Great Lakes region, including an atmospheric cold bias that is amplified by coupling to a 1D lake model but diminished by applying the Community Atmosphere Model radiation scheme and Morrison microphysics scheme; an excess precipitation bias; anomalously early initiation of fall lake turnover and subsequent cold lake bias; excessive and overly persistent lake ice cover; and insufficient evaporation over Lakes Superior and Huron. The research team is currently addressing these key limitations by coupling NU-WRF to a 3D lake model in support of the next generation of regional climate models for the critical Great Lakes Basin.
AB - As Earth’s largest collection of fresh water, the Laurentian Great Lakes have enormous ecological and socio-economic value. Their basin has become a regional hotspot of climatic and limnological change, potentially threatening its vital natural resources. Consequentially, there is a need to assess the current state of climate models regarding their performance across the Great Lakes region and develop the next generation of high-resolution regional climate models to address complex limnological processes and lake-atmosphere interactions. In response to this need, the current paper focuses on the generation and analysis of a 20-member ensemble of 3-km National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)-Unified Weather Research and Forecasting (NU-WRF) simulations for the 2014-2015 cold season. The study aims to identify the model’s strengths and weaknesses; optimal configuration for the region; and the impacts of different physics parameterizations, coupling to a 1D lake model, time-variant lake-surface temperatures, and spectral nudging. Several key biases are identified in the cold-season simulations for the Great Lakes region, including an atmospheric cold bias that is amplified by coupling to a 1D lake model but diminished by applying the Community Atmosphere Model radiation scheme and Morrison microphysics scheme; an excess precipitation bias; anomalously early initiation of fall lake turnover and subsequent cold lake bias; excessive and overly persistent lake ice cover; and insufficient evaporation over Lakes Superior and Huron. The research team is currently addressing these key limitations by coupling NU-WRF to a 3D lake model in support of the next generation of regional climate models for the critical Great Lakes Basin.
UR - https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/hydr/aop/JHM-D-21-0025.1/JHM-D-21-0025.1.xml
U2 - 10.1175/JHM-D-21-0025.1
DO - 10.1175/JHM-D-21-0025.1
M3 - Article
VL - 22
SP - 2423
EP - 2454
JO - Journal of Hydrometeorology
JF - Journal of Hydrometeorology
SN - 1525-755X
IS - 9
ER -