Results of the meteorological model WRF-ARW over Catalonia, using different parameterizations of convection and cloud microphysics

Abstract

The meteorological model WRF-ARW (Weather Research and Forecasting - Advanced ResearchWRF) is a new generation model that has a worldwide growing community of users. In theframework of a project that studies the feasibility of implementing it operationally at the Mete-orological Service of Catalonia, a verification of the forecasts produced by the model in severalcases of precipitation observed over Catalonia has been carried out. Indeed, given the impor-tance of precipitation forecasts in this area, one of the main objectives was to study the sensitivityof the model in different configurations of its parameterizations of convection and cloud micro-physics. In this paper, we present the results of this verification for two domains, a 36-km gridsize and one of 12 km grid size, unidirectionally nested to the previous one. In the externaldomain, the evaluation was based on the analysis of the main statistical parameters (ME andRMSE) for temperature, relative humidity, geopotential and wind, and it has been determinedthat the combination using the Kain-Fritsch convective scheme with the WSM5 microphysicalscheme has provided the best results. Then, with this configuration set for the external domain,some forecasts at the nested domain have been done, by combining different convection andcloud microphysics schemes, leading to the conclusion that the most accurate configuration isthe one combining the convective parameterization of Kain-Fritsch and the Thompson micro-physics scheme.