Abstract:
High-resolution simulation of summer climate over West Antarctica using the Polar-optimised version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model conducted at British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK. Runs are conducted for summer (January-centred) 1980-2015, i.e. from December 1979 to February 2015, for December, January and February (DJF). Experiments were carried out for the NERC West Antarctic Grant (NE/K00445X/1) during 2014-2017. The project is aimed at understanding the variability and climatology over the West Antarctic ice sheet and ice shelves as well as to project the future change over the twenty-first century.
The model outer domain encompasses the West Antarctic ice sheet and a large part of the surrounding ocean at 45 km horizontal grid spacing, and the nested (one-way) inner domain covers the Amundsen Sea Embayment at 15 km grid spacing. The model uses vertical eta coordinates with both domains have a model top of 50 hPa, and 30 vertical levels.
Keywords:
Polar WRF, West Antarctica, high-resolution regional modelling, hindcast
Deb, P., Orr, A., & Turner, J. (2018). Polar Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) simulation of West Antarctic climate, summer 1980-2015 (Version None) [Data set]. Polar Data Centre, Natural Environment Research Council, UK. https://doi.org/10.5285/9536f22e-37dd-4f37-948b-e19c70e15292
| Access Constraints: | No restrictions apply. |
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| Use Constraints: | This data is governed by the NERC data policy http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/sites/data/policy/ and supplied under Open Government Licence v.3 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ and the following condition. Please cite both the data and literature reference in any publication as follows: DATA REFERENCE Deb, P., Orr, A. & Turner, J. "Polar Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) simulation of West Antarctic climate, summer 1980-2015" (2018) Polar Data Centre, Natural Environment Research Council, UK doi:10.5285/9536f22e-37dd-4f37-948b-e19c70e15292 LITERATURE REFERENCE Deb et al., 2016 and Deb et al., 2018. |
| Creation Date: | 2018-03-13 |
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| Dataset Progress: | Complete |
| Dataset Language: | English |
| ISO Topic Categories: |
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| Parameters: |
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| Personnel: | |
| Name | UK PDC |
| Role(s) | Metadata Author |
| Organisation | British Antarctic Survey |
| Name | Dr Pranab Deb |
| Role(s) | Investigator |
| Organisation | University of East Anglia |
| Name | Dr Andrew Orr |
| Role(s) | Technical Contact, Investigator |
| Organisation | British Antarctic Survey |
| Name | Prof John Turner |
| Role(s) | Investigator |
| Organisation | British Antarctic Survey |
| Name | Tony Phillips |
| Role(s) | Technical Contact |
| Organisation | British Antarctic Survey |
| Parent Dataset: | N/A |
| Reference: | Deb, P., A. Orr, D. H. Bromwich, J. P. Nicolas, J. Turner, and J. S. Hosking (2018), Summer Drivers of Atmospheric Variability Affecting Ice Shelf Thinning in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica (in press) Bromwich, D. H., F. O. Otieno, K. M. Hines, K. W. Manning, and E. Shilo (2013), Comprehensive evaluation of polar weather research and forecasting performance in the Antarctic, J. Geophys. Res., 118, 274-292, doi:10.1029/2012JD018139. Deb, P., A. Orr, J. S. Hosking, T. Phillips, J. Turner, D. Bannister, J. O. Pope, and S. Colwell (2016), An assessment of the Polar Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model representation of near-surface meteorological variables over West Antarctica, J. Geophys. Res. Atmos., 121, 1532-1548, doi:10.1002/2015JD024037. Dee, D. P., et al. (2011), The ERA-interim reanalysis: Configuration and performance of the data assimilation system, Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc., 137, 553-597, doi: 10.1002/qj.828. Comiso, J. C. (2000), Bootstrap sea ice concentrations from NIMBUS-7 SMMR and DMSP SSM/I-SSM/S, Version 2, Subset Used: December, January, February from 1979 to 2015, NASA DAAC at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Boulder, Colorado. Casey, K., T. Brandon, P. Cornillion, and R. Evans (2010), The past, present, and future of the AVHRR pathfinder SST program, in Oceanography From Space: Revisited, edited by V. Barale, J. Gower, and L. Alberotanza, pp. 273-287, Spring, Netherlands, doi: 10.1007/978-90-481-8681-5_16. Fretwell, P., et al. (2013), Bedmap2: Improved ice bed, surface and thickness datasets for Antarctica, Cryosphere, 7, 375-393, doi:10.5194/tc-6-375-2013. |
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| Lineage: | The model uses the recommended configuration of version 3.5.1 of the polar modified Weather Research and Forecasting model (known as "Polar WRF"; Bromwich et al., 2013) for West Antarctica described by Deb et al. (2016). The model physics employed are - the WRF Single Moment 5-Class (WSM5) cloud microphysics scheme, the Mellor-Yamada-Janjic (MYJ) boundary layer scheme, the Rapid Radiative Transfer Model for General Circulation Models (RRTMG), and the Noah land surface model. The model outer domain encompasses the West Antarctic ice sheet and a large part of the surrounding ocean with 74 x 61 grid points at 45 km horizontal grid spacing centred on the point 72.7°S, 118.5°W, and the nested (one-way) inner domain covers the Amundssen Sea Embayment with 132 × 111 grid points at 15 km grid spacing centred on the point 73.5°S, 118.4°W. Both grids are defined on a polar stereographic projection with straight vertical longitude 120.5°W and latitude of true scale 70°S. The inner domain has longitude extremes at 164.1°W and 73.1°W, and latitude extremes at 81.1°S and 64.3°S (though the grid, being rectangular in polar stereographic space, does not completely fill this extent). In the vertical, both domains extend from the surface to 50 hPa, with 30 vertical levels. The model employs spectral nudging (outer domain and wave numbers 1-5 only, from approximately 1.5 km to the model top), high-resolution orography based on the Bedmap2 dataset, and meteorological forcing from ERA-Interim reanalysis (Dee et al., 2011). Additionally, the surface boundary forcing of the model includes daily satellite observations of sea ice concentration (based on the 25 km resolution Bootstrap data set; Comiso, 2000) and sea surface temperature (based on the 0.25° Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data set; Casey et al., 2010). The hindcast was produced by running separate simulations for each of the summer months from December 1979 to February 2015 (with 24 hr spin up). Python 2.7.3 version was used for post-processing. The netCDF4 library was used to extract the hourly model data and produce the monthly means (using the NumPy Python library). The monthly means were stored in binary npz format which can be easily loaded on Python. See the following link on how to save and load npz files on Python: https://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/routines.io.html#numpy-binary-files-npy-npz |
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| Temporal Coverage: | |
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| Start Date | 1979-12-01 |
| End Date | 2015-02-28 |
| Spatial Coverage: | |
| Latitude | |
| Southernmost | -80 |
| Northernmost | -80 |
| Longitude | |
| Westernmost | -90 |
| Easternmost | -90 |
| Altitude | |
| Min Altitude | N/A |
| Max Altitude | N/A |
| Depth | |
| Min Depth | N/A |
| Max Depth | N/A |
| Data Resolution: | |
| Latitude Resolution | N/A |
| Longitude Resolution | N/A |
| Horizontal Resolution Range | 10 km - < 50 km or approximately .09 degree - < .5 degree |
| Vertical Resolution | N/A |
| Vertical Resolution Range | N/A |
| Temporal Resolution | N/A |
| Temporal Resolution Range | N/A |
| Location: | |
| Location | Antarctica |
| Detailed Location | West Antarctica |
| Data Storage: | Model output for the inner domain (15 km horizontal resolution) are processed and stored in npz format which can be easily loaded on Python. The dataset includes a README.txt file that includes example Python/NumPy code illustrating how the data can be read. NPZ is a file format by numpy that provides storage of array data using gzip compression. This format supports data of any shape. However, the npz format does not provide streaming; all data is read/written at once. Further, there is no support for metadata (data is described below and in the dataset's README.txt file). Monthly data: The monthly mean of 2 m temperature (T2), 10 m wind (grid X directed (U10) and grid Y directed (V10) wind), surface pressure (PSFC) and total precipitation (RAINNC) are stored in files with extension *_monthly_mean_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz. The variables vDec, vJan and vFeb store monthly means for December (1979-2014), January (1980-2015) and February (1980-2015) respectively. List of files: T2_monthly_mean_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz (2 m temperature, unit: K) RAINNC_monthly_mean_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz (total precipitation, unit: mm) V10_monthly_mean_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz (10 m grid Y directed wind, unit: m/s) U10_monthly_mean_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz (10 m grid X directed wind, unit: m/s) PSFC_monthly_mean_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz (surface pressure, unit: Pa) Number of summer meltdays from daily accumulated snowmelt: Number of total summer (DJF) meltdays (melt day corresponds to daily accumulated snowmelt > 3kg/m2) during 1980-2015 (January-centred) are stored in 'Meltdays_SummerAcc_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz'. Daily Data: Daily 2 m temperature maxima and daily grid X directed wind extracted for summer months (DJF) of specific extreme years are stored in files with extension *_dailyOP_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz. For example, for Southern Annular Mode (SAM) positive years (excluding strong El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) years) are stored in the file: 'SAMpos_exclStrENSO_dailyOP_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz'. List of files: ASLpos_exclStrENSO_dailyOP_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz (all positive Amundsen Sea Low (ASL) years excluding strong ENSO years) ASLneg_exclStrENSO_dailyOP_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz (all negative ASL years excluding strong ENSO years) SAMpos_exclStrENSO_dailyOP_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz (all positive SAM years excluding strong ENSO years) SAMneg_exclStrENSO_dailyOP_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz (all negative SAM years excluding strong ENSO years) ElNino_dailyOP_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz (all El Nino years) LaNina_dailyOP_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz (all La Nina years) The variable 'u10asld' in file 'SAMpos_exclStrENSO_dailyOP_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz' contains the daily grid X directed wind (unit: m/s) for summer months of all SAM positive years. Similarly, the variable 't2maxasld' in file 'SAMpos_exclStrENSO_dailyOP_DJF_1980_2015_dom02.npz' contains the daily 2 m temperature maximum (unit: K) for summer months of all SAM positive years excluding strong ENSO years. Domain configuration: The netCDF3 file 'WRF_domain_d02_metadata.nc' contains the coordinate variables xlong (longitude) and xlat (latitude) for the inner domain grid points. The file also contains global attributes containing the projection, grid configuration and model configuration metadata for the inner (15 km) model domain. This file was created by extracting the first time step of variables XLONG and XLAT, and all the global attributes, from WRF output file wrfout_d02_1998-01-31_00:00:00 using Python 2.7.12 with Iris 1.11.0 (http://scitools.org.uk/iris/docs/v1.11.0/index.html). Similarly, 'WRF_domain_d01_metadata.nc' contains the domain data for the outer domain. |
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