MPAS-Atmosphere  2017 Convection Forecast Experiment

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The MPAS group in MMM/NCAR is performing a real-time convection prediction experiment with MPAS-Atmosphere from 25 April to  31 May 2016 in support of the NOAA/HWT Spring Experiment.  We are producing daily 5 day forecasts initialized at 00 UTC from the operational GFS analysis. The forecasts are using 15-3 km variable-resolution that places the 3 km cell spacing over North America. The mesh spacing is depicted below. For the 2017 Experiment, we have upgraded the physics in the scale-aware convection permitting MPAS-A suite to those from the latest WRF release.  We are also examining diagnostics for lightning flash rates for future use in chemistry applications.

Mesh used for the Spring Experiment forecasts

The physics used in these forecasts, taken from the WRF model, are Surface Layer: module_sf_mynn.F as in WRF 3.9. PBL: Mellor-Yamada-Nakanishi-Niino (MYNN) as in WRF 3.9. Land Surface Model (NOAH 4-layers): as in WRF 3.9. Gravity Wave Drag: YSU, as in WRF 3.6.1 Convection:  Grell-Freitas scale aware scheme, WRF 3.9 Microphysics: Thompson scheme (non-aeosol aware): as in WRF 3.9 Radiation: RRTMG sw as in WRF 3.9;  RRTMG lw as in WRF 3.9