For this case study we are going to use the Hurricane Matthew Case from October of 2016.
*Note: the Vortex-following capability only works for tracking cyclones
 

**To run WRF for this case you will need to be in the "running/WRF_VORTEX/" directory; however, to run WPS, you will use the same standard build that you've used for most of the other exercises.

1. Run the WPS Executables

1. Edit namelist.wps to configure the simulation domain and time.
   
   
   • We are going to create a single domain over the Gulf of Mexico - the nest will be added when we run WRF.
   
   
   • The domain size will be 91x100 grid points, with a grid resolution of 27km.
   
   
   • We will use a Mercator projection.
   
   
   • Make the following additional changes to ensure the domain spans the correct location on the globe:
     

     ref_lat = 28.00
     ref_lon = -75.00
     truelat1 = 30.0,
     truelat2 = 60.0,
     stand_lon = -75.00
     

   • The dates for this simuation are 2016-10-06_00 to 2016-10-08_00, and data are available 6-hourly. The data are from GFS and can be found in /home/ec2-user/input_data/Matthew/ (prefix: gfs.0p25.2016100).

   Note: GFS input data is only available every 6 hours, but setting 'interval_seconds = 10800' to update the boundary conditions every 3 hours will allow interpolation from 6-hourly to 3-hourly.
    
   

2. Check that your domain is in the correct location. It should look like the picture below:

   

3. Run the executables for the WPS program to create the necessary files for running wrf.

2. Set-up and Run WRF

1. Make sure you are in the running/WRF_VORTEX/test/em_real directory.    
    
    
2. Edit the namelist.input file to reflect the domain/date information of the Hurricane Matthew case (NOTE: we are running with 2 domains, although we only created one domain in WPS). Make sure the namelist components match those from WPS for d01. We have listed below the values you can use for d02.
    
   

   input_from_file = .true.,.false.,
   max_dom = 2,
   e_we = 91, 88,
   e_sn = 100, 79,
   dx = 27000, 9000,
   dy = 27000, 9000,
   i_parent_start = 1, 25,
   j_parent_start = 1, 14,
   parent_grid_ratio = 1, 3,
   parent_time_step_ratio = 1, 3,

   
    

   Notes:

   • input_from_file=.false. for domain 2 indicates that we will NOT be creating input data for domain 2.
   
   
   • The parent_start values are for the initial nest location - to something like 'make sure your vortex is inside the nest domain area at this time.  
   
   
   
3. Run real and wrf, as usual.


4. Check your output.

 

If this was successful, you can continue to another exercise.