Improvement in the Modeled Representation of North American Monsoon Precipitation Using a Modified Kain–Fritsch Convective Parameterization Scheme
Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) DivisionPhysical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Date
2018-01-19Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/626866
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Show full item recordAbstract
A commonly noted problem in the simulation of warm season convection in the North American monsoon region has been the inability of atmospheric models at the meso-β scales (10 s to 100 s of kilometers) to simulate organized convection, principally mesoscale convective systems. With the use of convective parameterization, high precipitation biases in model simulations are typically observed over the peaks of mountain ranges. To address this issue, the Kain–Fritsch (KF) cumulus parameterization scheme has been modified with new diagnostic equations to compute the updraft velocity, the convective available potential energy closure assumption, and the convective trigger function. The scheme has been adapted for use in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF). A numerical weather prediction-type simulation is conducted for the North American Monsoon Experiment Intensive Observing Period 2 and a regional climate simulation is performed, by dynamically downscaling. In both of these applications, there are notable improvements in the WRF model-simulated precipitation due to the better representation of organized, propagating convection. The use of the modified KF scheme for atmospheric model simulations may provide a more computationally economical alternative to improve the representation of organized convection, as compared to convective-permitting simulations at the kilometer scale or a super-parameterization approach.Citation
Luong T, Castro C, Nguyen T, Cassell W, Chang H-I (2018) Improvement in the Modeled Representation of North American Monsoon Precipitation Using a Modified Kain–Fritsch Convective Parameterization Scheme. Atmosphere 9: 31. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/atmos9010031.Sponsors
This work was principally supported by the US Department of Energy Award Number DE-SC0001172 grant. Additional support from the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP, project RC-2205) through the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments which improved the quality of the manuscript.Publisher
MDPI AGJournal
AtmosphereAdditional Links
http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/9/1/31ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.3390/atmos9010031
Scopus Count
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