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Refinement of horizontal resolution in dynamical downscaling of climate information using WRF: Costs, benefits, and lessons learned
Citation:
Bullock, R. AND E. Salmon. Refinement of horizontal resolution in dynamical downscaling of climate information using WRF: Costs, benefits, and lessons learned. American Meteorological Society, Louisiana, NO, January 11 - 12, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL) Computational Exposure Division (CED) develops and evaluates data, decision-support tools, and models to be applied to media-specific or receptor-specific problem areas. CED uses modeling-based approaches to characterize exposures, evaluate fate and transport, and support environmental diagnostics/forensics with input from multiple data sources. It also develops media- and receptor-specific models, process models, and decision support tools for use both within and outside of EPA.
Description:
Dynamical downscaling techniques have previously been developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) using a nested WRF at 108- and 36-km. Subsequent work extended one-way nesting down to 12-km resolution. Recently, the EPA Office of Research and Development used computing facilities at NASA’s National Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) to perform a 108/36/12-km two-way nested dynamical downscaling application of WRF based on a 2025-2035 dataset from NASA’s Model-E2 climate model (Schmidt et al., 2014). As a base case, a 108/36-km simulation was also performed to measure the effect of feedback from the 12-km nest. However, the primary intent was to investigate changes in the magnitude of simulated extreme events when finer horizontal resolution is used.
