%0 Journal Article
%T Orography-Induced Gravity Wave Drag Parameterization in the Global WRF: Implementation and Sensitivity to Shortwave Radiation Schemes
%A Hyeyum Hailey Shin
%A Song-You Hong
%A Jimy Dudhia
%A Young-Joon Kim
%J Advances in Meteorology
%D 2010
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2010/959014
%X This paper describes the implementation of the orographic gravity wave drag (GWDO) processes induced by subgrid-scale orography in the global version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The sensitivity of the model simulated climatology to the representation of shortwave radiation and the addition of the GWDO processes is investigated using the Kim-Arakawa GWDO parameterization and the Goddard, RRTMG (Rapid Radiative Transfer Model for GCMs), and Dudhia shortwave radiation schemes. This sensitivity study is a part of efforts of selecting the physics package that can be useful in applying the WRF model to global and seasonal configuration. The climatology is relatively well simulated by the global WRF; the zonal mean zonal wind and temperature structures are reasonably represented with the Kim-Arakawa GWDO scheme using the Goddard and RRTMG shortwave schemes. It is found that the impact of the shortwave radiation scheme on the modeled atmosphere is pronounced in the upper atmospheric circulations above the tropopause mainly due to the ozone heating. The scheme that excludes the ozone process suffers from a distinct cold bias in the stratosphere. Moreover, given the improper thermodynamic environment conditions by the shortwave scheme, the role of the GWDO process is found to be limited. 1. Introduction The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model has been evaluated in terms of regional modeling for both research and operational applications since it was first released in 2000. The capability of the regional WRF model is established over a wide temporal range; from short-range forecasts such as simulations of localized heavy rainfall and snowfall within a couple of days over Korea (i.e., [1, 2]), 36-h real time forecasts in the United States [3], and simulations of typhoon and hurricane that affect synoptic fields for several days (i.e., [4, 5]), to regional climate simulations of such as U.S. warm-season precipitation and East-Asia summer monsoon circulations (i.e., [6, 7]). These studies support the satisfactory performance of the WRF model in various regions over the globe. With the verification of the regional WRF model performance, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) researchers tested the ability of the WRF model to cover the global domain. It is noticed that a global version of WRF was first developed to study atmospheres on Mars and other planets by Mark Richardson and colleagues at California Institute of Technology, and researchers in NCAR Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology (MMM) Division extended that version
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/amete/2010/959014/