An evaluation of the variable‐resolution <scp>CESM</scp> for modeling California's climate

Huang, Xingying; Rhoades, Alan M.; Ullrich, P. A.; Zarzycki, Colin M.

doi:10.1002/2015ms000559

Cited by 80 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…Considering the relatively flat topography (less than 100 m) over most of CV, the $28 km grid resolution satisfies our need for modeling irrigation effects. In particular, simulations at 0.125 ($14 km) conducted in Huang et al [2016] did not show a statistically significant change in temperature statistics over California. In our study, as in Zarzycki et al [2015], general circulation patterns (e.g., wind, pressure and precipitation) do not exhibit apparent artifacts in the variable-resolution transition region.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…When compared to uniformresolution global models, VRGCMs provide a cost-effective approach for reaching high resolutions over a region of interest -the regional simulations in this study at 0.25 ($28 km) resolution represent a reduction in required computation of approximately 10 times over a global uniform simulation with resolution of 0.25 . VR-CESM has been demonstrated to be effective for regional climate studies and applications at a reduced computational cost compared to uniform GCMs Rhoades et al, 2015;Huang et al, 2016]. In particular, this study is one of the first to use variable resolution for assessing the impact of a physical parameterization at high-resolution in a global Earth-system model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Irrigation impacts on California's climate with the variable‐resolution CESM

Huang

Ullrich

2016

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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The variable‐resolution capability within the Community Earth System Model (VR‐CESM) is applied to understand the impact of irrigation on the regional climate of California. Irrigation is an important contributor to the regional climate of heavily irrigated regions, and within the U.S. there are few regions that are as heavily irrigated as California's Central Valley, responsible for 25% of domestic agricultural products. A flexible irrigation scheme with relatively realistic estimates of agricultural water use is employed. The impact of irrigation on mean climatology and heat extremes is investigated over the 26 year period 1980–2005 using a relatively fine grid resolution of (∼28 km). Three simulations are performed, including an unirrigated control run and two irrigation‐enabled runs, with results compared to gridded observations and weather station data sets. During the summer months (when irrigation peaks), irrigation leads to cooling of the daily maximum near‐surface temperature field (Tmax) by approximately 1.1 K. Under irrigation, latent heat flux increased by ∼61% during the daytime as a result of increased surface evaporation; specific humidity increased by about 12%; heat stress was reduced by 22% and the average soil moisture exhibited a small (∼4.4%) but statistically significant increase. Compared with observations, irrigation improved the frequency distribution of Tmax, and both length and frequency of hot spells were better represented with irrigation enabled. Consequently, we argue that high‐resolution simulations of regional climate in CESM, particularly over heavily irrigated regions, should likely enable the irrigation parameterization to better represent local temperature statistics.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Irrigation impacts on California's climate with the variable‐resolution CESM

Huang

Ullrich

2016

J Adv Model Earth Syst

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“…Note that near-surface temperature in NARR is not assimilated and shows strong warm bias in NARR when compared to observation-based gridded dataset (Z. Yang et al 2016;Huang et al 2016;Loikith et al 2015); however, the warm bias is significantly reduced by the WRF Model as shown later. Water vapor tracers embedded into the WRF Model, version 3.4.1, allow us to trace moisture that evaporates from any predefined source (Miguez-Macho et al 2013;Dominguez et al 2016).…”

Section: A Experimental Design and Model Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They found temperature decreases to be as large as 58C in the irrigated area and an accompanying downstream cooling. Using the variableresolution Community Earth System Model (VR-CESM), Huang and Ullrich (2016) found that irrigation over the California Central Valley (CCV) cools the daily maximum near-surface temperature by 1.18C. At the global scale, Sacks et al (2008) investigated irrigation impacts using the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM) coupled with the Community Land Model.…”

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confidence: 99%

Impact of Irrigation over the California Central Valley on Regional Climate

Yang

Domínguez²,

Zeng

et al. 2017

Journal of Hydrometeorology

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Irrigation, while being an important anthropogenic factor affecting the local to regional water cycle, is not typically represented in regional climate models. An irrigation scheme is incorporated into the Noah land surface scheme of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model that has a calibrated convective parameterization and a tracer package is used to tag and track water vapor. To assess the impact of irrigation over the California Central Valley (CCV) on the regional climate of the U.S. Southwest, simulations are run (for three dry and three wet years) both with and without the irrigation scheme. Incorporation of the irrigation scheme resulted in simulated surface air temperature and humidity that were closer to observations, decreased depth of the planetary boundary layer over the CCV, and increased convective available potential energy. The result was an overall increase in precipitation over the Sierra Nevada range and the Colorado River basin during the summer. Water vapor rising from the irrigated region mainly moved northeastward and contributed to precipitation in Nevada and Idaho. Specifically, the results indicate increased precipitation on the windward side of the Sierra Nevada and over the Colorado River basin. The former is possibly linked to a sea-breeze-type circulation near the CCV, while the latter is likely associated with a wave pattern related to latent heat release over the moisture transport belt.

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“…Application examples for static (nonmoving) mesh adaptations are provided in Zarzycki et al (2014), Rauscher and Ringler (2014), Zarzycki and Jablonowski (2015), and Huang et al (2016) (see also further references therein). Our paper focuses on dynamically adaptive grids, which track features of interest during the model simulation by locally adding or removing grid points as needed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing the Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) Characteristics of a High-Order 2D Cubed-Sphere Shallow-Water Model

Ferguson

Jablonowski

Johansen

et al. 2016

Monthly Weather Review

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Adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) is a technique that has been featured only sporadically in atmospheric science literature. This paper aims to demonstrate the utility of AMR for simulating atmospheric flows. Several test cases are implemented in a 2D shallow-water model on the sphere using the Chombo-AMR dynamical core. This high-order finite-volume model implements adaptive refinement in both space and time on a cubed-sphere grid using a mapped-multiblock mesh technique. The tests consist of the passive advection of a tracer around moving vortices, a steady-state geostrophic flow, an unsteady solid-body rotation, a gravity wave impinging on a mountain, and the interaction of binary vortices. Both static and dynamic refinements are analyzed to determine the strengths and weaknesses of AMR in both complex flows with small-scale features and large-scale smooth flows. The different test cases required different AMR criteria, such as vorticity or height-gradient based thresholds, in order to achieve the best accuracy for cost. The simulations show that the model can accurately resolve key local features without requiring global high-resolution grids. The adaptive grids are able to track features of interest reliably without inducing noise or visible distortions at the coarse-fine interfaces. Furthermore, the AMR grids keep any degradations of the large-scale smooth flows to a minimum.

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An evaluation of the variable‐resolution CESM for modeling California's climate

Cited by 80 publications

References 75 publications

Irrigation impacts on California's climate with the variable‐resolution CESM

Irrigation impacts on California's climate with the variable‐resolution CESM

Impact of Irrigation over the California Central Valley on Regional Climate

Analyzing the Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) Characteristics of a High-Order 2D Cubed-Sphere Shallow-Water Model

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