Publication Abstracts

Noble 2014

Noble, E.U., 2014: Investigating Daily Circulation and Precipitation over the West African Sahel with the WRF Model: A Regional Climate Model Adaptation Study. Ph.D. thesis. University of Colorado.

This dissertation a) evaluates the performance of the NCAR Weather and Research Forecasting (WRF) model as a West African Sahel regional-atmospheric model and b) investigates the utility of regional modeling to meeting user-needs. This work represents the beginning of an effort to adapt the model as a regional climate model (RCM) for the Sahel. Two independent studies test WRF sensitivity to 64 configurations of alternative parameterizations in a series of September simulations. In all, 104 12-day simulations during 11 consecutive years are examined. Simulated daily and mean circulation results are validated against NASA's Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) and NCEP Reanalysis-2. Modeled daily and total precipitation results are validated against NASA's Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) data. Particular attention is given to westward-propagating precipitation maxima associated with transient African Easterly Waves (AEWs). A wide range of 700-hPa vorticity and daily precipitation validation scores demonstrates the influence of alternative parameterizations. The best WRF performers achieve circulation correlations against reanalysis of 0.40-0.60 and realistic amplitudes of spatiotemporal variability for the 2006 focus year, but they get time-longitude precipitation correlations (against GPCP) of between 0.35-0.42. A parallel-benchmark-simulation by the NASA Regional Model-3 (RM3) achieves higher correlations but less realistic spatiotemporal variability. The largest favorable impact on WRF vorticity and precipitation validation is achieved by selecting the Grell-Devenyi cumulus convection scheme, resulting in higher correlations against reanalysis and GPCP than simulations using the Kain-Fritch convection. Other parameterizations have less-obvious impact. A comparison of reanalysis circulation against two NASA-radiosonde stations confirms that both reanalyses represent observations well enough to validate WRF results. A rain-gauge comparison does the same for GPCP and TRMM. Validation statistics for optimized WRF configurations simulating circulation for the parallel period during 10 additional years are less favorable than for 2006, whereas precipitation results are more favorable for 2005, 2006, and 2008, than for other years. The selection of some of the same WRF configurations as high scorers in both circulation and precipitation validations supports the notion that simulations of Sahel daily precipitation benefit from skillful simulations of associated AEW vorticity centers.

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BibTeX Citation

@phdthesis{no09000j,
  author={Noble, E. U.},
  title={Investigating Daily Circulation and Precipitation over the West African Sahel with the WRF Model: A Regional Climate Model Adaptation Study},
  year={2014},
  school={University of Colorado},
  address={Boulder},
}

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RIS Citation

TY  - THES
ID  - no09000j
AU  - Noble, E. U.
PY  - 2014
BT  - Investigating Daily Circulation and Precipitation over the West African Sahel with the WRF Model: A Regional Climate Model Adaptation Study
PB  - University of Colorado
CY  - Boulder
ER  -

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