Adapting the Weather Research and Forecasting Model for the Simulation of Regional Climate in East Africa

Download or read book Adapting the Weather Research and Forecasting Model for the Simulation of Regional Climate in East Africa written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The regional climate model (RCM) is a tool to fill the gap between the outcome of global climate model and the demand of regional government and society for regional climate information. The current Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) RCM inherits several advantages of the original WRF model. For example, (1) it can be used for multiple scale applications from large eddy to planetary scale; (2) it can be coupled to other climate system component models; (3) it has multiple physical options for different purposes of research; and (4) it has parallel infrastructure to distinguish the scientific problems from engineering problems. In order to adapt WRF for long term integration for climate application, the model and its pre- and post-processors are modified in several aspects, including SST and other surface parameters treatment, and exponential relaxation lateral boundary. In this study, we also transferred a pre-released version of CAM3 radiation scheme that was first implemented into WRF by NCAR Regional Climate Modeling team to the WRF standard release versions (2.1.1 released as of November 8, 2005 and 2.1.2 released as of January 30, 2006). The preliminary investigation demonstrates that the model has shown the encouraging and promising results on simulating regional climate. The objective of this study is to investigate the hydrological cycle in the East Africa region. Through data analysis, the water channel in the East Africa region is determined. The moisture transport from the Indian Ocean is the main source of the water vapor for precipitation in "short rain" season from October to December (OND). The variability of the moisture transport directly results in the variability of precipitation in OND. The local soil moisture, which directly connects to evaporation, does not substantially contribute to precipitation in the region. To investigate the physical processes of the variability of the moisture transport, five seasonal simulations from September to D.