H81 Department
Water, Atmosphere and Environment 
H814
Institute of Meteorology Environmental
Meteorology HIRMOD Project
HIRMOD - High-Resolution Atmospheric Modelling in Complex Terrain
for Future Climate Simulations
Staff: Petra
Seibert, Irene Schicker, Dèlia Arnold
Overview:
The creation of climate change scenarios at a resolution
on the scale of 1 km or better in mountainous terrain is an
unsolved problem even though impact
studies urgently need this. HIRMOD prepares for the time in the near
future when computers will be powerful enough to accomplish this
aim by dynamical downscaling with nonhydrostatic models. Two such
models, MM5 and WRF, which have already
produced realistic results at such high resolution in the Alps, will be
improved for some key features (digital elevation and landuse
data, initialisation, etc.). Then, systematic tests with episodic
simulations will be carried out to determine the optimum setup in
terms of horizontal and vertical resolution, domains, and
physical parameterisations. Results will be compared with station data,
remote sensing data, and coarse regional climate model output, and used
in transport simulations with FLEXPART to provide
further validation with observed concentrations of radon and
other trace gases at mountain stations.
Studies will be carried out for episodes representing a
selection of key
weather patterns:
- high pressure systems in winter,
- high pressure systems in summer,
- advective situations with a pre-frontal phase (southwesterly
winds) and
- advective situations with a postfrontal phase (northwesterly
winds)with and without lee cyclone development.
These simulations will focus on three complex
topographical areas of interest,
where we have previous modelling
experience. These will be
- the Inn Valley including Innsbruck and
Zugspitze as a high-mountain region,
- Schauinsland, a mountain in the German Black
Forest with an important regional GAW monitoring site as a low-mountain
region, and
- the Vienna Basin with the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods) as a hilly
region.
This
project
is
funded
by "Klima-
und Energiefonds".
External experts:
The HIRMOD project is being accompanied a group of external experts
with long-standing
experience in high-resolution modelling and mountain meteorology to
foster relevant contacts to other, mainly international, groups.
Through
workshops held during the course of the project, the methods, aims and
results will be discussed with the experts.
Dr.
Danijel Belusic
Department
of Geophysics, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb (Croatia)
Competences: atmospheric processes over complex terrain, downslope
windstorms, turbulence, low wind speeds, meandering
Dr. Jürg Schmidli
Institut für Atmosphäre und
Klima
, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, ETH (Switzerland)
Competences: thermally-induced flows, turbulence and exchange in
complex terrain, high-resolution modeling of summertime convection,
numerical methods in atmospheric and climate model
Dr. Silvia Trini Castelli
Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and
Climate, National Research Council (CNR), Torino (Italy)
Competences: numerical modelling of atmospheric circulation, transport
and pollutant dispersion, in particular over complex terrain, at
various scales, from the long range to the meso- and micro-scale
Dr. Yong Wang
Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie
und Geodynamik, ZAMG, Vienna (Austria)
Competences: mesoscale modelling, data assimilation, predictability
Priv.Doz. Dr. Günther Zängl
Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD (Offenbach,
Germany)
Competences: mountain flow dynamics, orographic precipitation,
high-resolution numerical modeling, model develmopment (numerics,
dynamical cores)
Activities:
1st Workshop with external experts, Vienna, 1-2 February 2010.
2nd Workshop with external experts, Vienna, 25 January 2011.
High Resolution modelling in Complex Terrain (HiRCoT) Workshop, Vienna, February, 2012.
Related Links:
HIRMOD
entry
in
BOKU
research information system FIS
Vienna Scientific Cluster
VSC
Weather activities at the Arctic
Region Supercomputing Center
Earth sciences
in the Barcelona Supercomputing Center
The Weather Research
and Forecasting (WRF) Model
The PSU/NCAR mesoscale model
(MM5)
Presentations:
- Poster at the EGU General Assembly (Vienna, May 2010): Seibert
P.,
I. Schicker, D. Arnold, H. Formayer, and I. Nadeem: Climate
simulation in mountain regions: why we need sub-km-scale resolution
- Presentation at the Symposium on Atmospheric Chemistry and
Physics at
Mountain Sites (Interlaken, Switzerland, 8-10 June 2010): Arnold,
D., Vargas A.,
Schicker, I. and P.
Seibert High-resolution backwards atmospheric transport modelling in
mountainous regions applied to source identification.
- KLI.EN workshop "Klimafolgenforschung – Rahmenbedingungen und
Förderungen des Klima- und Energiefonds", 15 July 2010, BOKU: Project
overview
and
first results (in German). PDF (5 MB)
- Poster at the 14th Conference on Mountain Meteorology (Squaw
Valley, USA, 30
August–3 September 2010): Arnold, D., Schicker, I. and P. Seibert: Atmospheric
transport
modelling
in mountainous regions using very high resolution
meteorological simulations.
[abstract]
- Presentation at the 14th Conference on Mountain Meteorology
(Squaw Valley, USA, 30
August–3 September 2010): Schicker, I., Arnold, D.,and P. Seibert: A
case
study
of very high resolution meteorological modelling in Alpine
landscapes using MM5 and WRF. [abstract]
- Poster at 31st ITM - NATO/SPS International Technical Meeting on
Air Pollution Modelling and its Application (Torino, Italy, 27
September - 1 October
2010): Arnold, D., Schicker, I., Formayer H. and P. Seibert: Towards high-resolution environmental
modelling in the Alpine region.
- Presentation and extended abstract at the Cray User Group
meeting (Fairbanks, Alaska, 23-26 May 2011): Morton, D., O. Nudson, D.
Bahls, P. Johnsen, D. Arnold, and I. Schicker: Grand-scale WRF Testing on the Cray XT5
and XE6, in Cray User Group Proceedings.
- Poster at the ICAM - International Conference on Alpine
Meteorology (Aviemore, UK, 23 - 27May 2011): Schicker, I., Arnold,
D.,and P. Seibert:
Updating the currently available
landuse data in WRF: impacts on
simulations for the Austrian Inn Valley. [poster]
- Poster and extended abstract at the 12th Annual WRF Users'
Workshop (Boulder, USA, 20-24 June, 2011): Arnold D., D. Morton, I.
Schicker, J. Zabloudil, O. Jorba, K. Harrison, G. Newby, and P.
Seibert: [extended abstract]
- Presentation at the 15th Conference on Mountain Meteorology
(Steamboat Springs, USA, 20 - 24
August 2012): Schicker, I., Arnold, D., and P. Seibert: A very high resolution
time slice simulation for Austria using WRF and remapped CORINE land-use data. [abstract]
[recorded presentation]
Publications:
- Arnold, D., Schicker, I. and P. Seibert, 2010:The HiRmod
project: Mesoscale meteorological modelling in the VSC: performance
evaluation. ZIDline, 22, ISSN 1605-475X [fulltext]
- Arnold, D., Schicker, I. and P. Seibert, 2010: High-Resolution
Atmospheric Modelling in Complex Terrain for Future Climate Simulations (HiRmod). VSC Report 2010 [fulltext]
- P. Seibert, Arnold, D., and I. Schicker 2012: High-Resolution Atmospheric Modelling
in Complex Terrain for Future Climate Simulations (HiRmod). Final report.
[fulltext]
- D. Arnold, D. Morton, I. Schicker, P. Seibert, M. W. Rotach,
K. Horvath, J. Dudhia, T. Satomura, M. Müller, G. Zängl, T. Takemi,
S. Serafin, J. Schmidli, S. Schneider, 2012: High Resolution Modelling in Complex Terrain.
Report on the HiRCoT 2012 Workshop, Vienna, 21 23 February 2012.
[fulltext]
- Arnold, D., Morton, D., Schicker, I., Seibert, P., Rotach, M. W., Horvath, K., Dudhia, J., Satomura, T., Müller, M., Zängl, G., Takemi , T., Serafin, S., Schmidli, J., Schneider, S. (2012): Issues in high-resolution atmospheric modeling in complex topography - The HiRCoT workshop, Croatian Meteorological Journal (Hrv. meteor. časopis), 47, 3-11. Online version, reprint (PDF, 79 kB) [20 Feb 2014, link update 27 Sep 2015]
- Irene Schicker, Dèlia Arnold Arias, Petra Seibert (2015): Influences of updated land-use datasets on WRF simulations for two Austrian regions, Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics June 2016, Volume 128, Issue 3, pp 279–301. Online version [24 Nov 2015]
Together with the the University of Alaska's
Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC), a
collection of WRF benchmark cases
has been created, which is ready to use for the WRF modeling
community. The idea behind this effort is that users are often
interested in determining how much their particular model set up will
cost, from a computational perspective. This information will influence
decisions in setting up model domains for operational and research WRF
simulations, along with aiding in decisions related to necessary
hardware and software resources for various model configurations. Benchmark cases available comprise large, multi-domain set-ups for Europe and for Alaska, allowing a more realistic evaluation of computational resources and efficiences for this type of problems.
