A Comparison of HWRF, ARW and NMM Models in Hurricane Katrina (2005) Simulation

Abstract

The life cycle of Hurricane Katrina (2005) was simulated using three different modeling systems of Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) mesoscale model. These are, HWRF (Hurricane WRF) designed specifically for hurricane studies and WRF model with two different dynamic cores as the Advanced Research WRF (ARW) model and the Non-hydrostatic Mesoscale Model (NMM). The WRF model was developed and sourced from National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), incorporating the advances in atmospheric simulation system suitable for a broad range of applications. The HWRF modeling system was developed at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) based on the NMM dynamic core and the physical parameterization schemes specially designed for tropics. A case study of Hurricane Katrina was chosen as it is one of the intense hurricanes that caused severe destruction along the Gulf Coast from central Florida to Texas. ARW, NMM and HWRF models were designed to have two-way interactive nested domains with 27 and 9 km resolutions. The three different models used in this study were integrated for three days starting from 0000 UTC of 27 August 2005 to capture the landfall of hurricane Katrina on 29 August. The initial and time varying lateral boundary conditions were taken from NCEP global FNL (final analysis) data available at 1 degree resolution for ARW and NMM models and from NCEP GFS data at 0.5 degree resolution for HWRF model. The results show that the models simulated the intensification of Hurricane Katrina and the landfall on 29 August 2005 agreeing with the observations. Results from these experiments highlight the superior performance of HWRF model over ARW and NMM models in predicting the track and intensification of Hurricane Katrina.

Dynamical downscaling the impact of spring Western US land surface temperature on the 2015 flood extremes at the Southern Great Plains: effect of domain choice, dynamic cores and land surface parameterization

“…However, several uncertainties arise when setting RCM nesting experiments. Such uncertainties include, sensitivity to the domain size choice and boundary location (Seth and Giorgi 1998;Vannitsem and Chomé 2005;Xue et al 2007;Leduc and Laprise 2009;Gao et al 2012;Bhaskaran et al 2012;Browne and Sylla 2012;Centella-Artola et al 2015;Dash et al 2015;Song et al 2018), dynamical core within the same RCM (Gallus and Bresch 2006;Dodla et al 2011;Litta et al 2012), and land surface process parameterizations (e.g. Xue et al 2001Xue et al , 2010Vidale et al 2003;Chen et al 2014;Li et al 2016).…”

Precipitation reduction during Hurricane Harvey with simulated offshore wind farms

“…The Advanced Research WRF version (ARW) is used instead of the hurricane version with data assimilation (HWRF). Although the latter has shown superior performance in previous studies of hurricanes (Dodla et al 2011), the goal of this study is not to simulate Hurricane Harvey perfectly, but rather to simulate the impacts of future offshore wind farms as realistically as possible. Assimilating observations that were collected in the absence of such wind farms would not be realistic in simulations that include wind farms, therefore ARW was run without data assimilation and without the complex data-driven vorticity enhancements used in HWRF.…”

Effect of extreme ocean precipitation on sea surface elevation and storm surges

“…From the BOM reports on historical tropical cyclones, the highest observed precipitation rates for Monica was 340 mm day −1 , Laurence (December 2009) 402 mm day −1 , Paul (March 2010) 443 mm day −1 and Yasi (January 2011) 471 mm day −1 . Outside Australia, the estimated maximum rainfall for hurricane Katrina (August 2005) was 300 mm day −1 (Dodla et al, ) and typhoon Morakot (August 2009) was 741 mm day −1 (Wu, ). Hence, the rainfall produced by Monica is not an extreme case compared to other tropical cyclones and the overestimation in the rainfall simulated here does not lead to an unrealistic scenario.…”