NORTHWEST REGIONAL MODELING COMMITTEE

DRAFT NOTES

17 May 2000 - 1:00 - 4:00 p.m.

Sand Point


 
 

ATTENDEES: Mark Albright, Frank Colby, and Cliff Mass, University of Washington; Phil Allen, Oregon DEQ; Clint Bowman and Jim Frost, Department of Ecology; Bob Bachman, USFS; Bill Brown, WDOT; Brad Colman and Chris Hill, National Weather Service; Mike Gilroy and Naydene Maykut, PS Clean Air; Rick Fritsch and Mike Sierchio, Navy; and Dick Stender, DNR.

PRESENTATIONS:

Air Quality Subcommittee: Bruce Thomson and his colleagues from Environment Canada gave us an update on mesoscale and air quality modeling in British Columbia. A large field study will be conducted in the Lower Fraser Valley in August-September of 2001. The purpose of the field study is to develop and validate the meteorological/air quality modeling system. Brian Lamb of WSU brought us up-to-date on the northwest photochemical modeling studies.

Ecology Regional Modeling Center Status: Clint informed us that the money has come in for this project. Ecology and WSU are currently working to set up the Models-3 framework.

 PROFILER: The profiler had been running great until this last week (best ever!) This morning the modem failed, it is being replaced. Mike Gilroy provided two new computers. NOAA technicians are going to take the hardware from the Sodar out of the shelter and install the new computers. The new software from RADIAN has to be installed at their Colorado office, Mike Gilroy would like some help in footing the bill for the software installation and shipping costs (~$20,000). Harry Edmon is going to set up a formal process for notifying NWS when the profiler goes down. Typically, the profiler is up within a few hours of notification.
 
 
 
  BOUNDARY LAYER SCHEMES: Dr. Frank Colby of the University of Mass gave us a presentation on his experiments with boundary layer schemes. Dr. Colby ran MM5 with 5 PBL schemes: MRF, Blackadar, Mellor-Yamada (MY), Burke-Thompson (BT) and Gayno-Seamon. The first 2 systems are K-theory. It is difficult to represent very shallow stable nocturnal boundary layers, so he concentrated on mixed layer development. He looked at maximum boundary layer depth, mean boundary layer potential temperature and mean boundary layer humidity. The MY and BT schemes were too cold, shallow and moist. MRF had the best validation. Clint suggested archiving boundary layer results at radiosonde sites to determine bias. AIRPACT: This project which is currently underway consists of using the output from MM5 in an air quality model in order to predict high ozone events in the summer and high PM events in the winter. There will be a special alert for asthmatics and significant public outreach associated with the project. 2001 WEATHER WORKSHOP: The next Weather Workshop will be Feb 9-10, 2001. Friday morning papers will be focused on air quality including the AIRPACT and Trans-Pacific studies. Friday afternoon and Saturday will include papers on aviation, MM5, ensembles, and other subjects of interest. There will be a poster session and several panel discussions. MM5 STATUS: Observational Assets (Mark): Receiving RAWS data in a more timely fashion

SNOTEL data set still needs to be brought in - instruments are being deployed in the Olympics, Skagit, Ross Lake, and west side of Mt. Rainier

USGS - 40 ARWIS sites (28 new) provide temperature, wind direction and precipitation

DOT - 4 Ferries providing 1-minute data (available on Ferry weather web site) - haven't been able to acquire bridge data yet

BC Ministry of Transportation - making ARWIS sites in southwest BC available

 New and Improved Graphics (Mark): New ventilation products - more colors

Forest Service Haines index -wind displayed alongside

Precipitation products - provided in English units

Animation - separate animations for each product

Soundings

Meteograms at PS Clean air monitoring sites

 Proposed Domain (Mark): 108 km - move to southwest to better resolve winter storms

36 km

12 km - 16% expansion

4 km - expand 93% to all of Washington and Oregon - new machines give us the ability to do all of Washington and Oregon

 Computer Acquisition (Cliff): Trade Tahoma (14 processor) + $60,000 for Tahoma-2 (24 processor) will be 2 - 2 1/2 times faster Sun keeping in mesoscale modeling will be two such machines in the department; therefore have help in troubleshooting

should be delivered in June 2000

Tahoma-2 will be used for the 4-km runs
 
 
 
 

 Mesoscale Modeling Team (Cliff): Cliff and Mark - MM5 development, AIRPACT, graphics

Dave Ovens - operational management, verification and maintenance, model development, ensemble systems

Ernie Recker - archival, back-ups, graphics development

Rick Steed (funded by WDOT) - land-surface development and testing, PBL schemes, data assimilation, ADAS development (local data assimilation system), ADAS real-time analysis (using Mark's data systems), initialization for MM5

Ken Westrick - coupled MM5/hydrological system, verification

Pascal Storek - helps Ken

Mark McIver (funded by WDOT) - ADAS web pages for WDOT, road-weather pages, ferries

Harry Edmon, Dave Warren, Marc Michelson - system support, hardware installation, software upgrades

Eric Grimmit - ensembles

 Ensembles (Cliff): Currently running AVN, CM (Canadian), ETA, NOGAPS

Increase to 10 in the summer

 Expansion to Idaho (Cliff): Possible to expand 4 km to all of Idaho, however would be 60 - 70% increase in workload on top of what we have already planned Would cost an additional $150 - 200 K

Considerable expansion of operational issues

Graphics, storage, archival Clint wrote proposal to EPA for the expansion - $300,000 for hardware and support

Considerable concern among the membership about overextending our modeling effort - would like Idaho to show interest and commitment to contribute to funding

 FUNDING: Funding discussion tabled until next meeting - meanwhile all members should actively seek funding to keep all of this work in which so many have invested so much (time and/or money) well in the black!
 
  NEXT MEETING: Wednesday, September 20, 2000 10:00 a.m. - noon Air Quality Subcommittee (Everyone is welcome)

1:00 - 4:30 p.m. Northwest Regional Modeling Committee