THE EFFECT OF MODEL HORIZONTAL RESOLUTION ON THE PRECIPITATION OF RAMMASUN

Abstract:

This paper investigates the effect of horizontal resolution on the precipitation of the super typhoon Rammasun (1409). The experiment uses WRF (V3.4) model with resolutions of 15 km, 9 km and 3 km. The results suggest that the simulated Rammasun rain band shapes and distributions at different horizontal resolutions are nearly the same. When the resolution is increased from 15 km to 9 km and then to 3 km, heavy precipitation is observed to spread in all directions from a concentrated distribution, especially when the resolution is increased from 9 km to 3 km. The 6h and 1h heavy precipitations also show a more significant comma-shape distribution. Moreover, the water vapor distribution shows the same characteristics as the heavy precipitation with a notably enhanced ascending movement and a decreased height of the strongest ascending movement. Of the three resolutions, the precipitation distribution simulated at 3 km resolution is the closest to the observed distribution; however, there is still a noticeable difference between the simulated precipitation and the actual observation. With the absence of the convection parameterization in the model, the precipitation distributions simulated at 9 km and 3 km resolutions demonstrate the same features as when the KF convection parameterization is applied. However, the simulated precipitations at these two resolutions are smaller than those obtained with the KF scheme. Meanwhile the difference between the simulated precipitations at these two resolutions is also smaller than that in the latter case. In general, when KF scheme is applied to the model, the simulation effect of Rammasun precipitation is better than that obtained without the convection parameterization scheme.