Abstract. This paper presents the Meso-NH model version 5.4. Meso-NH is an atmospheric non hydrostatic research model that is applied to a broad range of resolutions, from synoptic to turbulent scales, and is designed for studies of physics and chemistry. It is a limited-area model employing advanced numerical techniques, including monotonic advection schemes for scalar transport and fourth-order centered or odd-order WENO advection schemes for momentum. The model includes state-of-the-art physics parameterization schemes that are important to represent convective-scale phenomena and turbulent eddies, as well as flows at larger scales. In addition, Meso-NH has been expanded to provide capabilities for a range of Earth system prediction applications such as chemistry and aerosols, electricity and lightning, hydrology, wildland fires, volcanic eruptions, and cyclones with ocean coupling. Here, we present the main innovations to the dynamics and physics of the code since the pioneer paper of Lafore et al. (1998) and provide an overview of recent applications and couplings.

Kinetic energy (KE) spectra are applied to evaluate two convection-permitting models: the AROME numerical weather prediction operational model and the Meso-NH research model, that share the same physics and differ only in the dynamics (semi-Lagrangian semi-implicit versus Eulerian explicit schemes).A first analysis of AROME spectra for winter and summer seasons shows that the model-derived spectra match the observational spectra well, including the transition between k −3 and k −5/3 regimes. The vertical distribution of the spectra is coherent with previous observational and numerical studies and the diurnal cycle has a strong impact on the amount of KE in the mesoscale during summer.A comparative analysis of KE spectra for both models is then performed on a real case of individual convective cells that developed over plains, during the afternoon of 11 April 2007, characterized by a strong cold air outflow in the low levels. AROME spectra are characterized by a coarser effective resolution than Meso-NH, even without explicit diffusion, revealing the impact of the implicit diffusion of the semi-implicit semi-Lagrangian scheme used in AROME. For large time steps, the damping increases and can be attributed preferentially to the SI part of the SISL (semi-implicit semi-Lagrangian) formulation. Adiabatic runs show that the transition to a shallow mesoscale regime is still apparent even if the mesoscale KE variance strongly depends on the presence of the physical processes.Effective resolution of Meso-NH remains around 4-6 x for horizontal grid spacings between 2.5 km and 250 m. The effects of subgrid mixing schemes are also investigated with Meso-NH at 500 m horizontal grid spacing in the grey zone for turbulence, illustrating the difficulty in finding a good equilibrium between resolved and subgrid mixing at this scale.

Abstract. Accurate simulation of the spatial and temporal variability of tracer mixing ratios over urban areas is a challenging and interesting task needed to be performed in order to utilise CO2 measurements in an atmospheric inverse framework and to better estimate regional CO2 fluxes. This study investigates the ability of a high-resolution model to simulate meteorological and CO2 fields around Paris agglomeration during the March field campaign of the CO2-MEGAPARIS project. The mesoscale atmospheric model Meso-NH, running at 2 km horizontal resolution, is coupled with the Town Energy Balance (TEB) urban canopy scheme and with the Interactions between Soil, Biosphere and Atmosphere CO2-reactive (ISBA-A-gs) surface scheme, allowing a full interaction of CO2 modelling between the surface and the atmosphere. Statistical scores show a good representation of the urban heat island (UHI) with stronger urban–rural contrasts on temperature at night than during the day by up to 7 °C. Boundary layer heights (BLH) have been evaluated on urban, suburban and rural sites during the campaign, and also on a suburban site over 1 yr. The diurnal cycles of the BLH are well captured, especially the onset time of the BLH increase and its growth rate in the morning, which are essential for tall tower CO2 observatories. The main discrepancy is a small negative bias over urban and suburban sites during nighttime (respectively 45 m and 5 m), leading to a few overestimations of nocturnal CO2 mixing ratios at suburban sites and a bias of +5 ppm. The diurnal CO2 cycle is generally well captured for all the sites. At the Eiffel tower, the observed spikes of CO2 maxima occur every morning exactly at the time at which the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) growth reaches the measurement height. At suburban ground stations, CO2 measurements exhibit maxima at the beginning and at the end of each night, when the ABL is fully contracted, with a strong spatio-temporal variability. A sensitivity test without urban parameterisation removes the UHI and underpredicts nighttime BLH over urban and suburban sites, leading to large overestimation of nocturnal CO2 mixing ratio at the suburban sites (bias of +17 ppm). The agreement between observation and prediction for BLH and CO2 concentrations and urban–rural increments, both day and night, demonstrates the potential of using the urban mesoscale system in the context of inverse modelling

Abstract. This study presents the principles of the new coupling interface based on the SURFEX multi-surface model and the OASIS3-MCT coupler. As SURFEX can be plugged into several atmospheric models, it can be used in a wide range of applications, from global and regional coupled climate systems to high-resolution numerical weather prediction systems or very fine-scale models dedicated to process studies. The objective of this development is to build and share a common structure for the atmosphere-surface coupling of all these applications, involving on the one hand atmospheric models and on the other hand ocean, ice, hydrology, and wave models. The numerical and physical principles of SURFEX interface between the different component models are described, and the different coupled systems in which the SURFEX OASIS3-MCT-based coupling interface is already implemented are presented.

Abstract. This paper presents the Meso-NH model version 5.4. Meso-NH is an atmospheric non hydrostatic research model that is applied to a broad range of resolutions, from synoptic to turbulent scales, and is designed for studies of physics and chemistry. It is a limited-area model employing advanced numerical techniques, including monotonic advection schemes for scalar transport and fourth-order centered or odd-order WENO advection schemes for momentum. The model includes stateof-the-art physics parameterization schemes that are important to represent convective-scale phenomena and turbulent eddies, and cyclones with ocean coupling. Here, we present the main innovations to the dynamics and physics of the code since the pioneer paper of Lafore et al. (1998) and provide an overview of recent applications and couplings.

Abstract. This study presents the principles of the new coupling interface based on the SURFEX multi-surface model and the OASIS3-MCT coupler. As SURFEX can be plugged into several atmospheric models, it can be used in a wide range of applications, from global and regional coupled climate systems to high-resolution Numerical Weather Prediction systems or very fine scale systems dedicated to process studies. The objective of this development is to build and share a common structure for all these applications for the atmosphere-surface coupling, between atmospheric models and ocean, ice, hydrology, and wave models. The numerical and physical principles of the SURFEX interface between the different component models are described, and the different coupled systems into which the SURFEX OASIS3-MCT-based coupling interface is already applied are presented.

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Abstract. To help develop and compare physical parametrizations such as those found in a numerical weather or climate model, a new tool was developed. This tool provides a framework with which to plug external parametrizations, run them in an offline mode (using one of the two time-advance methods available), save the results and plot diagnostics. The software can be used in a 0-D and a 1-D mode with schemes originating from various models. As for now, microphysical schemes from the Meso-NH model, the AROME (Applications of Research to Operations at Mesoscale) model and the Weather Research and Forecasting model have been successfully plugged. As an application, Physical Parametrizations with PYthon (PPPY) is used in this paper to suppress the origin of the time-step dependency of the microphysical scheme used in the Météo-France small-scale operational numerical weather model. The tool helped to identify the origin of the dependency and to check the efficiency of the introduced corrections.