The efficiency of the WRF model for simulating typhoons

Abstract

The Weather Research Forecast (WRF) model includes various configuration optionsrelated to physics parameters, which can affect the performance of the model. In this study,different numerical experiments were conducted to determine the best combination of physicsparameterization schemes for the simulation of sea surface temperatures, latent heat flux,sensible heat flux, precipitation rate, and wind speed that characterized typhoons. Through these experiments, several physics parameterization options within the WRF modelwere exhaustively tested for typhoon Noul, which had originated in the South China Sea inNovember 2008. The model domain consisted of one coarse domain and one nested domain. The resolution of the coarse domain was 30 km, and that of the nested domain was 10 km. In this study, model simulation results were compared with the Climate Forecast SystemReanalysis (CFSR) data set. Comparisons between predicted and control data were madethrough the use of standard statistical measurements. The results facilitated thedetermination of the best combination of options suitable for predicting each physicsparameter. Then, the suggested best combinations were examined for seven other typhoonsand the solutions were confirmed. Finally, the best combination was compared with otherintroduced combinations for wind speed prediction for typhoon Washi (2011). Thecontribution of this study is to have attention to the heat fluxes besides the otherparameters. The outcomes showed that the suggested combinations are comparable withthe ones in the literature.