A Case Study of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model Applied to the Joint Urban 2003 Tracer Field Experiment. Part III: Boundary-Layer Parametrizations

Numerical weather prediction is often used to supply the mean wind and turbulence fields for atmospheric transport and dispersion plume models as they provide dense geographic coverage in comparison to typically sparse monitoring networks. Here, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model 4.0 was run over the month-long period of the Joint Urban 2003 field campaign conducted in Oklahoma City. We compare three different simulations in their ability to reproduce the observations, each using a different boundary-layer parametrization. Specifically, we examine the Mellor–Yamada–Janjic (MYJ), Yonsei University (YSU), and Mellor–Yamada–Nakanishi–Niino (MYNN) boundary-layer parametrizations. All three predict the wind speed well during the day but overpredict it at night. The MYNN parametrization is better than MYJ at predicting the daytime turbulence in the surface layer, but both underpredict the nocturnal turbulence. The MYJ parametrization is best at predicting the reciprocal Obukhov length, while MYNN and YSU both significantly overpredict thermal stability. Reconstructing the reciprocal Obukhov length from other simulated parameters produces more accurate values for both parametrizations. All three models overpredict the boundary-layer height, particularly under convective conditions. The MYJ parametrization overestimates boundary-layer height the most, while YSU and MYNN have comparable performance with MYNN having an advantage in predicting the stable boundary-layer height. Several days were found where the WRF simulations predict significant deviations from the prevailing diurnal pattern in wind direction, which are not found in the observations.