Weather Research and Forecasting Model
The Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) is a computer program that serves as a resource for both weather forecasting and climate modeling research. It is the latest numerical computer model used by the National Weather Service as well as the US military and private meteorological organizations worldwide.
Versions
The WRF is a modular, mesoscale model. There are two different variants of the model core:
- the Advanced Research WRF (ARW) of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) for research purposes
- the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) non-hydrostatic mesoscale model (NMM ) for operational service
The NMM is based on the Eta model by Zaviša Janjić and Fedor Messinger, while ARW is a further development of the MM5 model .
There are also
- a special version for hurricane research and forecasting (HWRF)
- a specialization in atmospheric chemistry and aerosols for environmental problems (WRF-Chem)
- as well as regionally adapted models
The Swiss company Meteoblue works with an NMM model that has a grid resolution of 4 km. Soaringmeteo works with an ARW model with the same resolution.
From version 3 the model is also able to run global simulations.
System requirements and installation
After registering on the WRF website, the program is freely available. For interested laypeople and sometimes even for thematically versed, the installation is still a major hurdle, although the performance of personal computers available today would certainly allow private use. Before using it, however, WRF itself and some program libraries (including netCDF , JasPer, zlib , libpng ) must be compiled . Comprehensive instructions are available in a compilation tutorial. The operating system required is Linux or operating systems specially designed for mainframes such as AIX , Darwin , Unicos .
Easy installation with WRF Environmental Modeling System (EMS)
A simplified installation with precompiled packages ( PGI compiler ) is offered by the WRF-EMS , made available by the Science & Training Resource Center (STRC) of the National Weather Service (NWS) of the Science Operations Officer (SOO). The program package works exclusively on computers with X86 processors from AMD or Intel with the freely available operating system Linux (32 and 64 bit).
Another significant advantage of the package is that important additional programs with graphical user interfaces for data preparation and follow-up as well as visualization programs are already integrated. A global data set of the earth's surface itself is also integrated. The data set is available in resolutions of 10, 5, 2 and 0.5 arc minutes.
Web links
- official website (English)
- The JasPer Project Home Page (ece.uvic.ca, English)
- Compilation Tutorial Step-by-Step (WRF compilation, mmm.ucar.edu, English)
- WRF User Guide (mmm.ucar.edu, English) - for the current WRF (ARW)
- WRF documentation. (PDF, 1.21 MB; English, on mmm.ucar.edu) - documentation that supplements the User Guide , including a description of the physics, etc.
- WRF-EMS (on strc.comet.ucar.edu) - easy to install WRF package including a large number of useful additional programs
WRF card providers:
- Large-scale transport of pollutants . 3-day forecast Saharan dust, fine dust, ozone for Europe (WRF / Chem), on the website of the Austrian Meteorological Service (ZAMG): Environment: Air quality
- Meteoblue resolutions: 30 km, 12 km, 4 km (NMM domains using the NEMS framework; initialization data from NOAA / NCEP (the 30 km are calculated globally))
- Kachelmannwetter resolution: 4 km, 1 km (ARW domains; embedded in the ICON nest model of the DWD)
- modellzentrale.de by Janek Zimmer Resolutions: 24 km, 12 km, 4 km (ARW domains; embedded in the GFS model of NOAA)
- WRF weather model by Thomas Testor Resolutions: 12 km, 4 km (parts of Europe), 1.3 km (Austria) (ARW domains; embedded in the GFS model of NOAA)
Individual evidence
- ^ Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model - Working Group 11: Atmospheric Chemistry. ruc.noaa.gov
- ↑ [1]
- ↑ WRF compilation
- ↑ WRF-EMS ( Memento of the original dated February 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.