TY - JOUR
T1 - Evaluation of the WRF-Urban Modeling System Coupled to Noah and Noah-MP Land Surface Models Over a Semiarid Urban Environment
AU - Salamanca Palou, Francisco
AU - Zhang, Yizhou
AU - Barlage, Michael
AU - Chen, Fei
AU - Mahalov, Alex
AU - Miao, Shiguang
N1 - Funding Information:
The MYD11A1 and MOD11A1 products were retrieved from the online Data Pool, courtesy of the NASA EOSDIS Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), USGS/Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, (https://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/MOLA). NSF grant DMS 1419593 and USDA NIFA grants 2015-67003-23508 and 2015-67003-23460 have funded this work. We thank the valuable suggestions from the anonymous reviewers that helped to improve considerably this article. F. S. conducted the simulations. F. S., Y. Z., and M. B. carried out the analysis. F. S., Y. Z., M. B., F. C., A. M., and S. M. planned the study and wrote the manuscript. WRF-modeled output data used in this article are stored at ASU’s High-Performance Computing facilities (https://cores/ research.asu.edu/research-computing/ about) and can be available to anyone upon request.
Publisher Copyright:
©2018. The Authors.
PY - 2018/3/16
Y1 - 2018/3/16
N2 - We have augmented the existing capabilities of the integrated Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)-urban modeling system by coupling three urban canopy models (UCMs) available in the WRF model with the new community Noah with multiparameterization options (Noah-MP) land surface model (LSM). The WRF-urban modeling system's performance has been evaluated by conducting six numerical experiments at high spatial resolution (1 km horizontal grid spacing) during a 15 day clear-sky summertime period for a semiarid urban environment. To assess the relative importance of representing urban surfaces, three different urban parameterizations are used with the Noah and Noah-MP LSMs, respectively, over the two major cities of Arizona: Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas. Our results demonstrate that Noah-MP reproduces somewhat better than Noah the daily evolution of surface skin temperature and near-surface air temperature (especially nighttime temperature) and wind speed. Concerning the urban areas, bulk urban parameterization overestimates nighttime 2 m air temperature compared to the single-layer and multilayer UCMs that reproduce more accurately the daily evolution of near-surface air temperature. Regarding near-surface wind speed, only the multilayer UCM was able to reproduce realistically the daily evolution of wind speed, although maximum winds were slightly overestimated, while both the single-layer and bulk urban parameterizations overestimated wind speed considerably. Based on these results, this paper demonstrates that the new community Noah-MP LSM coupled to an UCM is a promising physics-based predictive modeling tool for urban applications.
AB - We have augmented the existing capabilities of the integrated Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)-urban modeling system by coupling three urban canopy models (UCMs) available in the WRF model with the new community Noah with multiparameterization options (Noah-MP) land surface model (LSM). The WRF-urban modeling system's performance has been evaluated by conducting six numerical experiments at high spatial resolution (1 km horizontal grid spacing) during a 15 day clear-sky summertime period for a semiarid urban environment. To assess the relative importance of representing urban surfaces, three different urban parameterizations are used with the Noah and Noah-MP LSMs, respectively, over the two major cities of Arizona: Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas. Our results demonstrate that Noah-MP reproduces somewhat better than Noah the daily evolution of surface skin temperature and near-surface air temperature (especially nighttime temperature) and wind speed. Concerning the urban areas, bulk urban parameterization overestimates nighttime 2 m air temperature compared to the single-layer and multilayer UCMs that reproduce more accurately the daily evolution of near-surface air temperature. Regarding near-surface wind speed, only the multilayer UCM was able to reproduce realistically the daily evolution of wind speed, although maximum winds were slightly overestimated, while both the single-layer and bulk urban parameterizations overestimated wind speed considerably. Based on these results, this paper demonstrates that the new community Noah-MP LSM coupled to an UCM is a promising physics-based predictive modeling tool for urban applications.
KW - land surface models
KW - mesoscale modeling
KW - surface skin temperature
KW - urban canopy models
KW - urban heat island
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U2 - 10.1002/2018JD028377
DO - 10.1002/2018JD028377
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85044482641
SN - 2169-897X
VL - 123
SP - 2387
EP - 2408
JO - Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
JF - Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
IS - 5
ER -