A 3D comparison of WRF forecasts with observations during the RHUBC-II campaign
Poster PDF
Authors
David D. Turner — NOAA Global Systems Laboratory
Eli J. Mlawer — Atmospheric and Environmental Research
Julio Cesar Marin — Universidad de Valparaiso
Diana Rosa Pozo — Universidad de Valparaiso
Michel Cure — Universidad de Valparaiso
Description
The Radiative Heating in Underexplored Bands Campaigns (RHUBC) are a set of field experiments that aim to better understand the radiative processes in spectral regions with strong water vapor absorption. The RHUBC-II campaign was held at Cerro Toco (~5300 m of altitude) in the Atacama Desert in Chile from August to October 2009. These months show very low daily climatological precipitable water vapor (PWV) values that can range between 0.1 and 1.0 mm. The large number and diversity of data collected during the campaign provide a great opportunity to assess numerical weather forecasts over a complex orography and for very dry atmospheric conditions. In addition, this is a region relatively little studied, where meteorological observations are scarce and several astronomical observatories operating there need accurate forecasts. Forty-eight hours of forecast from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model are compared with RHUBC-II and satellite measurements for the period August–October 2009. Temperature, humidity, and wind speed and direction at and above the boundary layer will be presented. The PWV evolution and several cloud properties will also be shown.
