MPAS-Atmosphere  2015 Tropical Cyclone Forecast Experiment

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The MPAS group in MMM/NESL/NCAR is performing a real-time TC prediction experiment with MPAS-Atmosphere during the 2015 northern hemisphere tropical cyclone season. Daily 10-day forecasts are being produced daily initialized from the 0 UTC GFS analysis. A variable-resolution mesh with 60-15 km cell spacing is being used to produce three forecasts, with the high-resolution region centered on the Atlantic basin, the Eastern Pacific and Western Pacific basins.  The Western Pacific forecasts were begun in early July 2015.  The Eastern Pacific and Atlantic forecasts were begun later in July. We expect to produce these forecasts through the end of October. The mesh configurarions are depicted below.

The 15 km mesh uses 2,621,442 cells to tile the sphere (i.e. cells on a horizontal plane), and the variable-resolution meshes use 535,554 cells to tile the sphere.  The physics used in these forecasts, taken from the WRF model, are Surface Layer: (Monin Obukhov): module_sf_sfclay.F as in WRF 3.7. PBL: YSU as in WRF 3.4.1. Land Surface Model (NOAH 4-layers): as in WRF 3.3.1. Gravity Wave Drag: none Convection:  new Tiedtke, as in WRFV3.7 Microphysics: WSM6: as in WRF 3.5 Radiation: RRTMG sw as in WRF 3.4.1;  RRTMG lw as in WRF 3.4.1 Ocean Mixed Layer: modified from WRFV3.6