Cloud Resolving WRF Simulations of Precipitation and Soil Moisture Over the Central Tibetan Plateau: An Assessment of Various Physics Options

Abstract

The evaluation of the regional climate model is of great importance for model's developments and applications. We assessed the performance of Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) cloud resolving simulations with various physics options in terms of precipitation and soil moisture over the central Tibetan Plateau (TP) for a 2‐month simulation from July to August in 2015. The simulated precipitation is most sensitive to the microphysics scheme, followed by the land surface model, which plays a vital role in the soil moisture simulation, while the planetary boundary layer and radiation schemes have relatively minor impacts on the precipitation and soil moisture. Specifically, the heavy precipitation event has a close relationship with the land surface model. Among the different WRF schemes, the new Thompson microphysics scheme, the Noah land surface model, the GFDL radiation scheme, and the Mellor–Yamada planetary boundary layer scheme perform relatively better than other options over the central TP. In contrast, the Lin and WRF Single‐Moment 6‐class microphysics schemes tend to simulate an earlier precipitation peak in the diurnal cycle, excessively higher intensities, and greater frequencies for high precipitation events. The Rapid Update Cycle model performs the worst in the spatiotemporal pattern of precipitation and markedly exaggerates the diurnal variation of soil moisture. These results can provide valuable guidance for further fine‐scale simulation studies of land–atmosphere interaction over the TP.

Evaluation of ERA5 precipitation over the eastern periphery of the Tibetan plateau from the perspective of regional rainfall events

“…They also found that convection‐permitting model which explicitly resolve the deep convection process outperforms convection‐parameterization schemes models in the summer mean precipitation amount, frequency and intensity over the Tibetan Plateau. The choice of microphysics schemes and land surface model, as well as the ability to resolve orographic drag and mountain‐valley circulation over complex terrain could also influence the precipitation simulation over the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding area (Lin et al, 2018; Lv et al, 2020). Therefore, more realistic parameterization or explicit description of different rainfall‐relevant processes are needed in the future model development (Trenberth et al, 2017).…”

Convection‐permitting modelling improves simulated precipitation over the central and eastern Tibetan Plateau

“…Wang et al (2020) demonstrated that a WRF with 3 km grid spacing considerably reduced wet biases over the central Himalayas. Lv et al (2020) used the WRF to conduct a 2-month simulation to test different model physical configurations over the central TP. They found that the simulated precipitation frequency is dominated by the microphysics scheme and the simulated soil moisture is most sensitive to the land surface model.…”

Representation of Stony Surface‐Atmosphere Interactions in WRF Reduces Cold and Wet Biases for the Southern Tibetan Plateau

“…The synergy of orographic drag parameterization and finer resolution can further greatly reduce biases of WRF-simulated precipitation in central Himalaya (Wang, Yang, et al, 2020). Furthermore, recent studies have proven that the simulation with convection-permitting resolution improves accuracy in simulating the seasonal or diurnal cycle of precipitation over TP (Li et al, 2020(Li et al, , 2021Lv et al, 2020;Ou et al, 2020;Zhou et al, 2021). Wang, Tolksdorf, et al (2020) showed that the simulated temperature can be improved by correcting the initial snow depth in WRF.…”