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B4dWo1f edited this page Apr 21, 2021 · 3 revisions

Welcome to the RUN wiki!

Here we'll document everything we learn about the WRF model and how we managed our installation.

Hopefully it will be useful for other people trying to set up a WRF for their local area ;)

What is RUN

RUN is a RASP "developed" by Uri and Noel.
Developed is probably a strong word for our role here. DrJack developed a Regional Atmospheric Soaring Prediction. A weather forecast system with a special focus on the useful properties for free flight (paragliding, hang-gliding...). The RASP is based on the Weather Research and Forecasting Model which is a "a state-of-the-art atmospheric modeling system designed for both meteorological research and numerical weather prediction" developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (represented by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and the Earth System Research Laboratory), the U.S. Air Force, the Naval Research Laboratory, the University of Oklahoma, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Using DrJack's RASP as a roadmap we have made a new, modern, implementation of the same idea.

The Flow: GFS-WRF-RASP

Nothing in a weather forecast is easy. In our case we are going to produce a regional weather forecast, which includes several steps. First, real data is measured by satellites and weather stations, it is fed to a Golbal Forecast System (GFS), which produces a coarse forecast for the planet. Then, we use this forecast as boundary conditions to estimate the local properties of the atmosphere in a certain region.

The GFS

The Global Forecast System (GFS) is a weather forecast model produced by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). It provides a 16 day forecast with ~28 km resolution.

The WRF

The Weather Research and Forecasting Model is a program that runs the numerical computation of a number of properties of the atmosphere over a period of time. It matches the GFS forecasts in the boundaries and solves the fluid equations of motions for the atmosphere. This program is quite complicated and, hopefully, we'll investigate the physical options in time.

The RASP

The original DrJack's RASP is a wrapper to the WRF which "makes it easier" to download the GFS forecast, run the WRF calculation and post-process the results. The most valuable contribution (for me) is the post-processing codes which derive a number of properties from the WRF output. We use DrJack's codes and develop our own in order to get the most useful forecast that we can get.