Comprehensive physics testing and adaptive weather research and forecasting physics for day‐ahead solar forecasting

Abstract

Numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, which attempt to simulate the full state of the atmosphere, come with many options for dealing with processes that are unable to be explicitly resolved by the model. These model parameterizations are an ongoing area of research in atmospheric science. However, with continuous contributions from the research community and subsequent upgrade of the NWP codes, there are often many options for each unresolved process-leaving the user confronted with potentially thousands of ways to configure the model. We use the weather research and forecasting (WRF) model to forecast global horizontal irradiance (GHI) and undertake the task of narrowing down these options for a location in Qinghai, China. We show that optimizing the configuration of the WRF model based on the type of day (sunny, partly cloudy, or cloudy) is 13.6% better than using a single best configuration for all types of days. We also show that this performance improvement holds true for a longer 3-month test period (17.8% improvement).

Comparisons of Initial Condition Perturbation Methods for Regional Ensemble Forecasts of Wind Speed in Gansu of China

“…The ECMWF EPS is run four times per day, and only the ensemble forecast data initialized at 12 UTC is used to run the WRF model for 54 hours of forecasts. The physics parameterizations are selected following the same methodology presented in the [41]. The selected schemes include WRF Single-Moment 6-Class for microphysics [42], Bougeault-Lacarrère (BouLac) planetary boundary layer (PBL) scheme [43], Pleim-Xiu land surface model [44,45], Kain-Fritsch scheme for cumulus [46], and New Goddard for both longwave and shortwave radiation [47].…”

WRF Model Sensitivity to Spatial Resolution in Singapore: Analysis for a Heavy Rain Event and General Suitability

“…A process for optimising the physics options important to rainfall (cumulus parameterisation, microphysics, planetary boundary layer and surface schemes) similar to that outlined in Ref. [18] was conducted for the 3 km domain. These, plus other important options are outlined in Table 3.…”