MPAS-Atmosphere  2016 Tropical Cyclone Forecast Experiment

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The MPAS group in the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Laboratory at NCAR is performing a real-time TC prediction experiment with MPAS-Atmosphere during the 2016 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 Western Pacific basin.  We may be running forecasts for the Eastern Pacific and Atlantic basins if TC activity warrants it. We expect to produce these experimental forecasts through the end of October. The mesh configurarions are depicted below.  The Western Pacific basin mesh for which we are producing daily forecasts is on the left, and the Eastern Pacific and Atlantic basin meshes are center and right, respectively.  The meshes are all the same, except rotated to center the high resolution region over a specific basin.

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 3.8. Land Surface Model (NOAH 4-layers): as in WRF 3.3.1. Gravity Wave Drag: YSU gravity wave drag scheme. Convection:  new Tiedtke, as in WRFV3.8 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