To improve the wind and precipitation forecasts over South China, a modified orographic drag parameterization(OP) scheme that considers both the gravity wave drag(GWD) and the mountain blocking drag(MBD) effects was implemented in the Global/Regional Assimilation and Prediction System Tropical Mesoscale Model(GRAPES-TMM). Simulations were performed over one month starting from 1200 UTC19 June 2013. The initial and lateral boundary conditions were obtained from the NCEP global forecast system output. The simulation results were compared among a control(CTL) experiment without the OP scheme, a GWDO experiment with the OP scheme that considers only the GWD effect, and an MBD experiment with the modified OP scheme(including both GWD and MBD). The simulation with the modified OP scheme successfully captured the main features of precipitation, including its distribution and intensity,and improved the wind circulation forecast in the lower troposphere. The modified OP scheme appears to improve the wind forecast by accelerating the ascending air motion and reinforcing the convergence in the rainfall area. Overall, the modified OP scheme exerts positive impacts on the forecast of large-scale atmospheric fields in South China.
The parameterization of gravity wave drag induced by sub-grid scale orography(GWDO), which has been used in the regional model based on the Global/Regional Assimilation and Prediction System for Tropical Mesoscale Model(GRAPES_TMM), is extended to include the effect of mountain flow blocking drag(MBD). The extended scheme is evaluated against non-GWDO parameterization, including a cold air outbreak over southern China and a monthly verification in February 2012. The experiment results show that the GWDO and MBD parameterization both improves the forecasting of the cold air outbreaks over southern China, as well as alleviations of system bias of GRAPES_TMM.(1) The extended scheme alleviates the strong southerly wind and high surface temperature simulation during the cold air outbreak, especially over northern Guangxi and Guangdong(NGG) province, where local high surface temperature simulation reduces nearly 5 degree.(2) The MBD parameterization improves southerly wind simulations over NGG, as well as surface temperature forecasts improvement over Guangxi, Guizhou province and southern Yunnan-Guizhou plateau(YUP), and low level southerly wind simulation improvement over intertidal zone over south China.(3) The formation of MBD is mainly in the mountain area(Wuyi, Daba mountain, east of YUP) and coastal area. The MBD over plateau, which is mainly formed at the west of 105°E, is stronger and thicker than that over Nanling mountain.(4) The improvement of GWDO and MBD parameterization is stable in model physics. MBD parameterization demonstrates more overall improvements in the forecasts than GWDO, and the larger of the model forecast error is, the greater improvements of MBD contribute to. Overall, the extended GWDO scheme successfully improves the simulations of meteorological elements forecasting during cold air outbreaks.
In this paper, we first analyzed cloud drift wind(CDW) data distribution in the vertical direction, and then reassigned the height of every CDW in the research domain in terms of background information, and finally, conducted contrast numerical experiments of assimilating the CDW data before and after reassignment to examine the impacts on the forecast of the track of Typhoon Chanthu(1003) from 00:00(Coordinated Universal Time) 21 July to 00:00 UTC23 July, 2010. The analysis results of the CDW data indicate that the number of CDWs is mainly distributed in the midand upper-troposphere above 500 h Pa, with the maximum number at about 300 h Pa. The height reassigning method mentioned in this work may update the height effectively, and the CDW data are distributed reasonably and no obvious contradiction occurs in the horizontal direction after height reassignment. After assimilating the height-reassigned CDW data, especially the water vapor CDW data, the initial wind field around Typhoon Chanthu(1003) became more reasonable, and then the steering current leading the typhoon to move to the correct location became stronger. As a result, the numerical track predictions are improved.
In this study, we attempted to improve the nowcasting of GRAPES model by adjusting the model initial field through modifying the cloud water, rain water and vapor as well as revising vapor-following rain water. The results show that the model nowcasting is improved when only the cloud water and rain water are adjusted or all of the cloud water, rain water and vapor are adjusted in the initial field. The forecasting of the former(latter) approach during 0-3(0-6) hours is significantly improved. Furthermore, for the forecast for 0-3 hours, the latter approach is better than the former. Compared with the forecasting results for which the vapor of the model initial field is adjusted by the background vapor with those by the revised vapor, the nowcasting of the revised vapor is much better than that of background vapor. Analysis of the reasons indicated that when the vapor is adjusted in the model initial field, especially when the saturated vapor is considered, the forecasting of the vapor field is significantly affected. The changed vapor field influences the circulation, which in turn improves the model forecasting of radar reflectivity and rainfall.
Clouds have important effects on the infrared radiances transmission in that the inclusion of cloud effects in data assimilation can not only improve the quality of the assimilated atmospheric parameters greatly, but also minimize the initial error of cloud parameters by adjusting part of the infrared radiances data. On the basis of the Grapes-3D-var (Global and Regional Assimilation and Prediction Enhanced System), cloud liquid water, cloud ice water and cloud cover are added as the governing variables in the assimilation. Under the conditions of clear sky, partly cloudy cover and totally cloudy cover, the brightness temperature of 16 MODIS channels are assimilated respectively in ideal tests. Results show that when the simulated background brightness temperatures are lower than the observation, the analyzed field will increase the simulated brightness temperature by increasing its temperature and reducing its moisture, cloud liquid water, cloud ice water, and cloud cover. The simulated brightness temperature can be reduced if adjustment is made in the contrary direction. The adjustment of the temperature and specific humidity under the clear sky conditions conforms well to the design of MODIS channels, but it is weakened for levels under cloud layers. The ideal tests demonstrate that by simultaneously adding both cloud parameters and atmospheric parameters as governing variables during the assimilation of infrared radiances, both the cloud parameters and atmospheric parameters can be adjusted using the observed infrared radiances and conventional meteorological elements to make full use of the infrared observations.
