Assessment of a Regional-Scale Weather Model for Hydrological Applications in South Korea

Jung, Yong; Lin, Yuh-Lang

doi:10.5539/enrr.v6n2p28

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 35 publications

(34 reference statements)

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“…The Noah and Noah-MP land surface models (Niu et al, 2011;Yang et al, 2011) are the most commonly used for glacier studies (Claremar et al, 2012;Aas et al, 2016;Collier et al, 2015Collier et al, , 2018Gerber et al, 2018), but the WRF simulations can depend substantially on which of the two land surface models is used (Milovac et al, 2016). Similarly, the Grell 3D Ensemble cumulus scheme together with the Thompson microphysics scheme have been shown to work best over mountainous terrain, whereas the Kain-Frisch cumulus scheme with Thompson microphysics worked best over the plains (Jung and Lin, 2016). These mentioned examples highlight the importance of a sensitivity analysis regarding the choice of WRF physics parameterization schemes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of ERA5 and Dynamical Downscaling for Surface Energy Balance Modeling at Mountain Glaciers in Western Canada

Draeger

Radić

White

et al. 2023

Preprint

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To project glacier melt in response to anthropogenic climate change, output from coarsely resolved global climate models needs to be downscaled to the local scale of glaciers. Due to the high computational cost of dynamical downscaling, statistical downscaling has been more commonly used in glacier studies despite yielding results with large uncertainties. Here we investigate the use of global reanalysis data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis), with and without dynamical downscaling, for surface energy balance (SEB) modeling at four glaciers in Western Canada. We focus on the sites with available on-glacier meteorological measurements collected over different summer seasons from 2012 to 2019. We dynamically downscale ERA5 with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model at 3.3 km and 1.1 km grid spacing. We find that the SEB model, forced separately with observations and reanalysis, yields <10 % difference in simulated seasonal melt. Relative to the observations, the reanalysis gives slightly overestimated incoming shortwave radiation and substantially underestimated wind speed, yielding underestimated turbulent heat fluxes. These biases, however, cancel each other out in the SEB model of seasonal melt. Downscaling with WRF improves the simulation of wind speed, while other meteorological variables show similar performance to the reanalysis without downscaling. The choice of WRF physics parameterization schemes is shown to have a relatively large impact on the simulations of SEB components, but a small impact on the modeled total melt energy over the observational periods. The similar performance of WRF and ERA5, as input to the SEB model at our glacier sites, gives confidence in using WRF for projections of glacier melt in this region.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of ERA5 and Dynamical Downscaling for Surface Energy Balance Modeling at Mountain Glaciers in Western Canada

Draeger

Radić

White

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…The Noah (Tewari et al, 2004) and Noah-MP land surface models (Niu et al, 2011;Yang et al, 2011) are the most commonly used in glacier studies, but the WRF simulations over non-glacierized terrain are shown to vary substantially depending on which of the two land surface models is used (Milovac et al, 2016). The WRF model is not only sensitive to the choice of parameterization scheme in each category, but also to their combination across different categories (Jung and Lin, 2016). While WRF sensitivity to the choice of physics parameterisations has been explored extensively in studies on climate dynamics and related disciplines, to our knowledge no systematic sensitivity analysis has been conducted for glacier melt modeling.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of ERA5 and Dynamical Downscaling for Surface Energy Balance Modeling at Mountain Glaciers in Western Canada

Draeger

Radić

White

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Regional-scale surface energy balance (SEB) models of glacier melt require forcing by coarse-gridded data from reanalysis and/or global climate models that need to be downscaled to glacier scale. As on-glacier meteorological observations are rare, it generally remains unknown how exact the reanalysis and downscaled data are for the local-scale SEB modeling. We address this question by evaluating the performance of reanalysis from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ERA5 and ERA5-Land reanalysis), with and without downscaling, at four glaciers in Western Canada with available on- glacier meteorological measurements collected over different summer seasons. We dynamically downscale ERA5 with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model at 3.3 km and 1.1 km grid spacing. We find that the SEB model, forced separately with the observations and the two reanalyses, yields <10 % difference in simulated total melt energy and shows strong correlations (>0.79) in simulated timeseries of daily melt energy at each site. The good performance of the reanalysis-derived melt energy is partly due to cancellation of biases between overestimated incoming shortwave radiation and substantially underestimated wind speed and subsequently turbulent heat fluxes. Downscaling with WRF improves the simulation of wind speed, while other meteorological variables show similar performance to ERA5 without downscaling. The choice of WRF physics parameterization schemes is shown to have a relatively large impact on the simulations of SEB components, but a smaller impact on the modeled total melt energy. The results increase our confidence in dynamical downscaling with WRF for long-term glacier melt modeling in this region.

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Applicability of physically generated rainfall data using a regional weather model

Choi

Jung

2022

Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess

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Assessment of a Regional-Scale Weather Model for Hydrological Applications in South Korea

Abstract: In this study, a regional numerical weather prediction (NWP) model known as the Weather Research Forescasting (WRF) model was adopted to improve the quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPF) by optimizing combined microphysics and cumulus parameterization schemes.

Cited by 5 publications

References 35 publications

Evaluation of ERA5 and Dynamical Downscaling for Surface Energy Balance Modeling at Mountain Glaciers in Western Canada

Evaluation of ERA5 and Dynamical Downscaling for Surface Energy Balance Modeling at Mountain Glaciers in Western Canada

Evaluation of ERA5 and Dynamical Downscaling for Surface Energy Balance Modeling at Mountain Glaciers in Western Canada

Applicability of physically generated rainfall data using a regional weather model

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