Heinzeller, Dominikus, Meteorological Service of New
Zealand Ltd., Cory Davis and Graham Rye
Following the
Christchurch earthquakes in September 2010 and February 2011, we set up a high
resolution (1.5km) domain centred over Christchurch to assist earthquake rescue
and recovery operations. The geographic location of the city with the marina to
the East, the peninsula to the South, the planes and mountain ranges to the
West, and the quickly changing weather over New Zealand made this model an interesting
object of study. We discuss orographic effects, numerical artifacts arising
from nesting a high-resolution domain in difficult terrain, and limitations of
physical parameterisations stemming from running WRF at this resolution. We
also present verifications of this domain against our operational 4km, 8km and
12km models over New Zealand and show that the higher-resolution models can
reproduce some synoptic situations of the Christchurch area better than the
lower-resolution domains.