scholarly journals Real-Time Forecast of Dense Fog Events over Delhi: The Performance of the WRF Model during the WiFEX Field Campaign

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 739-756
Author(s):  
Prakash Pithani ◽  
Sachin D. Ghude ◽  
R. K. Jenamani ◽  
Mrinal Biswas ◽  
C. V. Naidu ◽  
...  

Abstract A Winter Fog Experiment (WiFEX) was conducted to study the genesis of fog formation between winters 2016–17 and 2017–18 at Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), Delhi, India. To support the WiFEX field campaign, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model was used to produce real-time forecasts at 2-km horizontal grid spacing. This paper summarizes the performance of the model forecasts for 43 very dense fog episodes (visibility < 200 m) and preliminary evaluation of the model against the observations. Similarly, near-surface liquid water content (LWC) from models and continuous visibility observations are used as a metric for model evaluation. Results show that the skill score is relatively promising for the hit rate with a value of 0.78, whereas the false alarm rate (0.19) and missing rate (0.32) are quite low. This indicates that the model has reasonable predictive accuracy, and the performance of the real-time forecast is better for both dense fog events and no-fog events. For success cases, the model accurately captured the near-surface meteorological conditions, particularly the low-level moisture, wind fields, and temperature inversion. In contrast, for failed cases, the WRF Model shows large error in near-surface relative humidity and temperature compared to the observations, although it captures temperature inversions reasonably well. Our results also suggest that the model is able to capture the variability in fog onset for consecutive fog events. Errors in near-surface variables during failed cases are found to be affected by the errors in the initial conditions taken from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology Global Forecasting System (IITM-GFS) spectral model forecast. Further evaluation of the operational forecasts for dense fog cases indicates that the error in predicting fog onset stage is relatively large (mean error of 4 h) compared to the dissipation stage.

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 3085-3104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Huang ◽  
Gregory R. Carmichael ◽  
James H. Crawford ◽  
Armin Wisthaler ◽  
Xiwu Zhan ◽  
...  

Abstract. Land and atmospheric initial conditions of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model are often interpolated from a different model output. We perform case studies during NASA's SEAC4RS and DISCOVER-AQ Houston airborne campaigns, demonstrating that using land initial conditions directly downscaled from a coarser resolution dataset led to significant positive biases in the coupled NASA-Unified WRF (NUWRF, version 7) surface and near-surface air temperature and planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) around the Missouri Ozarks and Houston, Texas, as well as poorly partitioned latent and sensible heat fluxes. Replacing land initial conditions with the output from a long-term offline Land Information System (LIS) simulation can effectively reduce the positive biases in NUWRF surface air temperature by ∼ 2 °C. We also show that the LIS land initialization can modify surface air temperature errors almost 10 times as effectively as applying a different atmospheric initialization method. The LIS-NUWRF-based isoprene emission calculations by the Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN, version 2.1) are at least 20 % lower than those computed using the coarser resolution data-initialized NUWRF run, and are closer to aircraft-observation-derived emissions. Higher resolution MEGAN calculations are prone to amplified discrepancies with aircraft-observation-derived emissions on small scales. This is possibly a result of some limitations of MEGAN's parameterization and uncertainty in its inputs on small scales, as well as the representation error and the neglect of horizontal transport in deriving emissions from aircraft data. This study emphasizes the importance of proper land initialization to the coupled atmospheric weather modeling and the follow-on emission modeling. We anticipate it to also be critical to accurately representing other processes included in air quality modeling and chemical data assimilation. Having more confidence in the weather inputs is also beneficial for determining and quantifying the other sources of uncertainties (e.g., parameterization, other input data) of the models that they drive.


2013 ◽  
Vol 141 (3) ◽  
pp. 964-986 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dong-Hyun Cha ◽  
Yuqing Wang

Abstract To improve the initial conditions of tropical cyclone (TC) forecast models, a dynamical initialization (DI) scheme using cycle runs is developed and implemented into a real-time forecast system for northwest Pacific TCs based on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model. In this scheme, cycle runs with a 6-h window before the initial forecast time are repeatedly conducted to spin up the axisymmetric component of the TC vortex until the model TC intensity is comparable to the observed. This is followed by a 72-h forecast using the Global Forecast System (GFS) prediction as lateral boundary conditions. In the DI scheme, the spectral nudging technique is employed during each cycle run to reduce bias in the large-scale environmental field, and the relocation method is applied after the last cycle run to reduce the initial position error. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DI scheme, 69 forecast experiments with and without the DI are conducted for 13 TCs over the northwest Pacific in 2010 and 2011. The DI shows positive effects on both track and intensity forecasts of TCs, although its overall skill depends strongly on the performance of the GFS forecasts. Compared to the forecasts without the DI, on average, forecasts with the DI reduce the position and intensity errors by 10% and 30%, respectively. The results demonstrate that the proposed DI scheme improves the initial TC vortex structure and intensity and provides warm physics spinup, producing initial states consistent with the forecast model, thus achieving improved track and intensity forecasts.


2011 ◽  
Vol 139 (3) ◽  
pp. 809-829 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Perlin ◽  
Eric D. Skyllingstad ◽  
Roger M. Samelson

Abstract The study analyzes atmospheric circulation around an idealized coastal cape during summertime upwelling-favorable wind conditions simulated by a mesoscale coupled ocean–atmosphere model. The domain resembles an eastern ocean boundary with a single cape protruding into the ocean in the center of a coastline. The model predicts the formation of an orographic wind intensification area on the lee side of the cape, extending a few hundred kilometers downstream and seaward. Imposed initial conditions do not contain a low-level temperature inversion, which nevertheless forms on the lee side of the cape during the simulation, and which is accompanied by high Froude numbers diagnosed in that area, suggesting the presence of the supercritical flow. Formation of such an inversion is likely caused by average easterly winds resulting on the lee side that bring warm air masses originating over land, as well as by air warming during adiabatic descent on the lee side of the topographic obstacle. Mountain leeside dynamics modulated by differential diurnal heating is thus suggested to dominate the wind regime in the studied case. The location of this wind feature and its strong diurnal variations correlate well with the development and evolution of the localized lee side trough over the coastal ocean. The vertical extent of the leeside trough is limited by the subsidence inversion aloft. Diurnal modulations of the ocean sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and surface depth-averaged ocean current on the lee side of the cape are found to strongly correlate with wind stress variations over the same area. Wind-driven coastal upwelling develops during the simulation and extends offshore about 50 km upwind of the cape. It widens twice as much on the lee side of the cape, where the coldest nearshore SSTs are found. The average wind stress–SST coupling in the 100-km coastal zone is strong for the region upwind of the cape, but is notably weaker for the downwind region, estimated from the 10-day-average fields. The study findings demonstrate that orographic and diurnal modulations of the near-surface atmospheric flow on the lee side of the cape notably affect the air–sea coupling on various temporal scales: weaker wind stress–SST coupling results for the long-term averages, while strong correlations are found on the diurnal scale.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Huang ◽  
Gregory R. Carmichael ◽  
James H. Crawford ◽  
Armin Wisthaler ◽  
Xiwu Zhan ◽  
...  

Abstract. Land and atmospheric initial conditions of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model are often interpolated from a different model output. We perform case studies during NASA's SEAC4RS and DISCOVER-AQ Houston airborne campaigns, demonstrating that initializing the Noah land surface model directly using a coarser resolution dataset North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) led to significant positive biases in the coupled NASA-Unified WRF (NUWRF, version 7)'s (near-) surface air temperature and planetary boundary layer height (PBLH) around the Missouri Ozarks and Houston, Texas, as well as poorly partitioned latent and sensible heat fluxes. Replacing the land initial conditions with the output from a long-term offline Land Information System (LIS) simulation can effectively reduce the positive biases in NUWRF's surface air temperature fields by ~ 2 °C. We also show that the LIS land initialization can modify the surface air temperature errors almost ten times as effectively as applying a different atmospheric initialization method. The LIS-NUWRF based isoprene emission calculations by the Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN, version 2.1) are at least 20 % lower than those computed using the NARR-initialized NUWRF run, and are closer to the aircraft observation-derived emissions. Higher resolution MEGAN calculations are prone to amplified errors on small scales, possibly resulted from some limitations of MEGAN's parameterization and its inputs' uncertainty. This study emphasizes the importance of proper land initialization to the coupled atmospheric weather modeling and the follow-on emission modeling, which we anticipate to be also critical to accurately representing other processes included in air quality modeling and chemical data assimilation. Having more confidence in the weather inputs is also beneficial for determining and quantifying the other sources of uncertainties (e.g., parameterization, other input data) of the models that they drive.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherif M. Hanafy ◽  
Hussein Hoteit ◽  
Jing Li ◽  
Gerard T. Schuster

AbstractResults are presented for real-time seismic imaging of subsurface fluid flow by parsimonious refraction and surface-wave interferometry. Each subsurface velocity image inverted from time-lapse seismic data only requires several minutes of recording time, which is less than the time-scale of the fluid-induced changes in the rock properties. In this sense this is real-time imaging. The images are P-velocity tomograms inverted from the first-arrival times and the S-velocity tomograms inverted from dispersion curves. Compared to conventional seismic imaging, parsimonious interferometry reduces the recording time and increases the temporal resolution of time-lapse seismic images by more than an order-of-magnitude. In our seismic experiment, we recorded 90 sparse data sets over 4.5 h while injecting 12-tons of water into a sand dune. Results show that the percolation of water is mostly along layered boundaries down to a depth of a few meters, which is consistent with our 3D computational fluid flow simulations and laboratory experiments. The significance of parsimonious interferometry is that it provides more than an order-of-magnitude increase of temporal resolution in time-lapse seismic imaging. We believe that real-time seismic imaging will have important applications for non-destructive characterization in environmental, biomedical, and subsurface imaging.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (9) ◽  
pp. 2471
Author(s):  
Tommaso Bradde ◽  
Samuel Chevalier ◽  
Marco De Stefano ◽  
Stefano Grivet-Talocia ◽  
Luca Daniel

This paper develops a predictive modeling algorithm, denoted as Real-Time Vector Fitting (RTVF), which is capable of approximating the real-time linearized dynamics of multi-input multi-output (MIMO) dynamical systems via rational transfer function matrices. Based on a generalization of the well-known Time-Domain Vector Fitting (TDVF) algorithm, RTVF is suitable for online modeling of dynamical systems which experience both initial-state decay contributions in the measured output signals and concurrently active input signals. These adaptations were specifically contrived to meet the needs currently present in the electrical power systems community, where real-time modeling of low frequency power system dynamics is becoming an increasingly coveted tool by power system operators. After introducing and validating the RTVF scheme on synthetic test cases, this paper presents a series of numerical tests on high-order closed-loop generator systems in the IEEE 39-bus test system.


2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 723-741 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao-Ming Hu ◽  
Ming Xue ◽  
Petra M. Klein ◽  
Bradley G. Illston ◽  
Sheng Chen

AbstractMany studies have investigated urban heat island (UHI) intensity for cities around the world, which is normally quantified as the temperature difference between urban location(s) and rural location(s). A few open questions still remain regarding the UHI, such as the spatial distribution of UHI intensity, temporal (including diurnal and seasonal) variation of UHI intensity, and the UHI formation mechanism. A dense network of atmospheric monitoring sites, known as the Oklahoma City (OKC) Micronet (OKCNET), was deployed in 2008 across the OKC metropolitan area. This study analyzes data from OKCNET in 2009 and 2010 to investigate OKC UHI at a subcity spatial scale for the first time. The UHI intensity exhibited large spatial variations over OKC. During both daytime and nighttime, the strongest UHI intensity is mostly confined around the central business district where land surface roughness is the highest in the OKC metropolitan area. These results do not support the roughness warming theory to explain the air temperature UHI in OKC. The UHI intensity of OKC increased prominently around the early evening transition (EET) and stayed at a fairly constant level throughout the night. The physical processes during the EET play a critical role in determining the nocturnal UHI intensity. The near-surface rural temperature inversion strength was a good indicator for nocturnal UHI intensity. As a consequence of the relatively weak near-surface rural inversion, the strongest nocturnal UHI in OKC was less likely to occur in summer. Other meteorological factors (e.g., wind speed and cloud) can affect the stability/depth of the nighttime boundary layer and can thus modulate nocturnal UHI intensity.


1992 ◽  
Vol 258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y.M. Li ◽  
I. An ◽  
M. Gunes ◽  
R.M. Dawson ◽  
R.W. Collins ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTWe have studied a-Si:H prepared by alternating plasma deposition with atomic H treatments performed with a heated W filament. Real time spectroscopie ellipsometry provides the evolution of film thickness, optical gap, and a measure of the fraction of Si-Si bonds broken in the near-surface (200 Å) during H-exposure of single films. This information guided us to the desired parameters for the H-treatments. Here, we concentrate on a weak hydrogenation regime characterized by minimal etching, a higher H content by 2 at.%, and a larger optical gap by 0.02 eV for the growth/hydrogenation structures in comparison to continuously deposited control samples. This new material has shown an improvement in the defect density in the light-soaked state in comparison to the control samples. This may result from stabilization of the Si structure due to an increase in the H chemical potential in the a-Si:H.


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