P43 Spatiotemporal coastal-urban boundary-layer performance of a high-resolution urbanized-WRF: Comparisons with ground-based remote sensing during a heat event.
Melecio-Vazquez, David, Department of Mechanical Engineering and NOAA-CREST Center, The City College of New York (CCNY), Jaymes Kenyon, Joseph Olson, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, and NOAA/Earth System Research Laboratory, Prathap Ramamurthy, Department of Mechanical Engineering and NOAA-CREST Center, CCNY, Mark Arend, Department of Electrical Engineering and NOAA-CREST Center, CCNY, and Jorge E. Gonzalez-Cruz, Department of Mechanical Engineering and NOAA-CREST Center, CCNY
Multiple boundary-layer observations over New York City from a Doppler LiDAR and a microwave radiometer were analyzed over an intense heat event on July 2, 2018 and used to test the performance of WRF urban physics. The high resolution 1-km urbanized-Weather Research and Forecasting (uWRF) model, utilizes a high-resolution land-cover/land-use dataset to capture the spatial variability of the New York urban morphology. The urban physics parameterizations of the Building Environment Parameterization coupled with a Building Energy Model (BEPBEM) are modified to (1) include a variable drag coefficient as a function of building heights, and (2) a cooling tower model. Comparisons with uWRF show that the model tends to overestimate convective efficiency during the summer, which results in a much deeper thermal boundary layer than the observed profiles. Additionally, the effect of using initial and boundary conditions from the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model (3-km) are compared against using the conditions from the North American Mesoscale Model (12-km).