WRF Preprocessing System Version 3.6: Updates

WPS Version 3.6

Version 3.6 of the WRF Pre-Processing System (WPS) was released on 15 April 2014.

Note: New datasets have been added to WPS/geogrid. Users should download the new datasets, or edit geogrid/GEOGRID.TBL to remove the new entries (LAI12M and LAKE_DEPTH).

The V3 WRF model is NOT backward cmpatible with old V2 input files. One must rerun WPS to generate data for real/wrf.

Also see 'Known Problems' in this release.

New terrestrial data sets:

• Global 12 monthly, 30-sec, MODIS Leaf-Area Index data is added. This is based on MODIS product MCD15A2 from 2001 - 2010 (experimental only). A 10 m resolution dataset is also available. It is recommended that this dataset is used together with the MODIS landuse, and greenness fraction dataset.

• Global 15-arc second MODIS landuse data, from Patrick Broxton and Xubin Zeng of U of Arizona

• Global lake depth data from FLake group.

• Lower resolution VARSSO (variance of sub-grid-scale orogoraphy) - more appropriate for lower resolution run.

New features:

• Add the capability to specify a maximum search radius in the source data grid for the 'search' interpolation option. A maximum search radius is specified as an integer value in parentheses added directly after the 'search' keyword, e.g.,

interp_options = ...+search(10)

If no search radius is specified, the search will extend up to a default radius of 1200 points from the origin of the search.

• Add 'flag_in_output' keyword to the list of possible keywords in a GEOGRID.TBL.

• Add plotfmt.ncl for plotting ungrib output, and gfs.ncl to plot GFS grib data.

• New Vtable for 20th Century Reanalysis: Vtable.TCRP

• In support of Greg Thompson's 3d aerosol fields, treat fields found in constant files by metgrid as time-dependent to ensure that vertical levels are sorted in the same way as with other time-varying fields.

Bug fixes:

• Account for scaling of the data values in a constant bitmapped array. (Thanks to Matt Pyle of NCEP for the solution)

• Increase maxlvl to 150 to accommodate ECMWF 137 level data.

• plotgrids.ncl updated. The old version is retained as plotgrids_old.ncl

Other:

• Unused fields SLPX and SLPY have been removed from GEOGRID.TBL files