HR: 1340h
AN: A13E-1610    [Abstracts]
TI: Assimilating QuikSCAT SeaWinds With WRF Model for High Latitude Sea Breeze Simulation
AU: * Fan, X
EM: xfan@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 903 Koyukuk Dr. P.O. Box 757320, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320, United States
AU: Zhang, J
EM: jing@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 903 Koyukuk Dr. P.O. Box 757320, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320, United States
AU: Krieger, J R
EM: jeremy@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 903 Koyukuk Dr. P.O. Box 757320, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320, United States
AU: Morton, D J
EM: morton@arsc.edu
AF: University of Montana, 32 Campus Dr MS 5256, Missoula, MT 59812, United States
AU: Shulski, M D
EM: martha@climate.gi.alaska.edu
AF: Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 903 Koyukuk Dr. P.O. Box 757320, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320, United States
AU: Klene, A E
EM: anna.klene@gmail.com
AF: University of Montana, 32 Campus Dr MS 5256, Missoula, MT 59812, United States
AU: Zhang, X
EM: xdz@iarc.uaf.edu
AF: International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 930 Koyukuk Dr, Fairbanks, AK 99775, United States
AB: Sea breezes along the Arctic coastal areas, especially in the Beaufort Sea coast, are associated with seasonal change of solar insolation, sea ice retreat, and complex terrain of the Brooks Range. Improvement of sea surface wind simulation with a high resolution mesoscale model is of particular interest in oil spill impact assessment and management, as well as in coastal erosion assessment. The objective of this study is to use the mesoscale weather research and forecast (WRF) model with satellite data assimilation to achieve a high quality simulation of Beaufort Sea regional weather patterns. The SeaWinds instrument onboard the polar-orbiting quick scatterometer (QuikSCAT) satellite is a specialized radar that measures ice-free ocean surface wind speed and direction. This data provides significant information over open water areas, where conventional observations are very sparse, for model validation and simulation improvement. The QuikSCAT SeaWinds level 2B data which have a horizontal resolution of 12.5 km are assimilated into the WRF model and its three-dimensional variational data assimilation system (WRF-Var) to study the impacts of QuikSCAT data on WRF simulations of surface wind fields and sea breezes. The modeling domain has been setup to cover the Beaufort Sea area with 235x136 grid points at 10 km resolution and is centered at (155W, 71.3N). In order to apply the WRF-Var system, a customized WRF model error statistics and length scales are created using a one-year simulation of WRF for this particular domain. Two 5-day periods, 10/01/2002-10/05/2000 and 9/20/2004-9/24/2004, are selected to conduct our case study. The years 2002 and 2004 had most open water area, i.e., the farthest ice retreat, during recent seven years; and thus, there are more QuikSCAT SeaWinds data available for our study. Preliminary results show that the WRF model is capable of simulating wind fields very well by verifying modeled winds with station observations. Further results on the impact of QuikSCAT data from validating model output with both surface station observations and QuikSCAT winds, and sea breezes analysis will be presented at the conference.
DE: 3315 Data assimilation
DE: 3329 Mesoscale meteorology
DE: 3349 Polar meteorology
DE: 3355 Regional modeling
DE: 3364 Synoptic-scale meteorology
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting