Foreword

This User’s Guide describes the Advanced Research WRF (ARW) Version 3.6 modeling system, released in April 2014. As the ARW is developed further, this document will be continuously enhanced and updated. Please send feedback to wrfhelp@ucar.edu.

This document is complementary to the ARW Tech Note (http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/docs/arw_v3.pdf), which describes the equations, numerics, boundary conditions, and nesting etc. in greater detail.

Highlights of updates to WRFV3.6 include:

· WRF model:

New physics:

o Sub-tiling capability for Noah LSM (contributed by Dan Li of Princeton)

o Lake model (contributed by Hongping Gu of IAP China and Jiming Jin of Utah State University)

o Full and ‘fast’ versions of HUJI spectral bin microphysics (contributed by Alex Khain and Barry Lynn of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)

o Improved aerosol input capability for use in RRTMG and new Goddard radiation options (contributed by Jose Ruiz-Arias of University of Jaen, Spain)

o Sub-grid cloud fraction from Kain-Fritsch scheme (contributed by Alapaty and Herwehe of EPA)

o Vertical structure function in SKEBS (contributed by J. Berner of NCAR)

Others:

o Improved wind farm parameterization (contributed by Pedro Jimenez of Spain, and Henning Heiberg-Andersen of Uni Rerearch, Norway)

o Improvement to NoahMP

o WRF-Hydro 2.0 (contributed by NCAR/RAL)

o Diagnostic option (contributed by AFWA)

o Faster netCDF write (contributed by Jim Abeles of IBM and J. Michalakes of NCEP)

o 12-montly, 30-sec Leaf-Area Index dataset derived from MODIS (contributed by M. Barlage of NCAR/RAL)

o 15-seconds MODIS landuse dataset (contributed by Patrick Broxton and Xubin Zeng of Univ of Arizona)

· WRF-DA updates:

o New instruments which can be assimilated: Meteosat SEVIRI (IR radiance), AIREP humidity and Metop-B instruments (IASI, AMSU-A and MHS)

o Observation thinning for conventional obs in ASCII format

o Dual-resolution hybrid assimilation

o Radiative transfer code updated: CRTM is up to 2.1.3, and RTTOV 11.1

· WRF-Chemistry

o Improvement on existing code and packages.

For the latest version of this document, please visit the ARW Users’ Web site at http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/.

Contributors to this guide:

Wei Wang, Cindy Bruyère, Michael Duda, Jimy Dudhia, Dave Gill, Michael Kavulich, Kelly Keene, Hui-Chuan Lin, John Michalakes, Syed Rizvi, Xin Zhang, Judith Berner and Kate Smith

Contributors to WRF-Fire chapter:

Jonathan D. Beezley, Janice L. Coen, and Jan Mandel

Contributors to UPP section:

Hui-Ya Chuang, Nicole McKee, Tricia Slovacek, Jamie Wolff, and Kate Smith

Special Acknowledgment:

We gratefully acknowledge the late Dr. Thomas T. Warner for his years of research, development, instruction, leadership, and motivation in the field of NWP modeling.