Title: WRF evaluation exercise using open sea in situ measurements

Authors: Alessandra Balzarini; Guido Pirovano; Giuseppe Maurizio Riva; Anna Toppetti; Roberto Bozzano; Sara Pensieri; Elisa Canepa; Elisabetta Schiano

Addresses: Research on Energy System (RSE), S.p.A, Via R. Rubattino 54, 20134 Milan, Italy ' Research on Energy System (RSE), S.p.A, Via R. Rubattino 54, 20134 Milan, Italy ' Research on Energy System (RSE), S.p.A, Via R. Rubattino 54, 20134 Milan, Italy ' Research on Energy System (RSE), S.p.A, Via R. Rubattino 54, 20134 Milan, Italy ' National Research Council of Italy – Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation (CNR-ISSIA), Via De Marini 6, 16149 Genoa, Italy ' National Research Council of Italy – Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation (CNR-ISSIA), Via De Marini 6, 16149 Genoa, Italy ' National Research Council of Italy – Institute of Marine Sciences (CNR-ISMAR), Via De Marini 6, 16149 Genoa, Italy ' National Research Council of Italy – Institute of Marine Sciences (CNR-ISMAR), Via De Marini 6, 16149 Genoa, Italy

Abstract: This work regards a model evaluation exercise concerning the WRF meteorological model and in situ measurements collected both over land, at four WMO meteorological stations, and over open sea, by ODAS Italia 1, the only spar buoy in the Mediterranean Sea. In particular, this exercise is finalised to understand the ability of the model to act as meteorological pre-processor to simulate aerosol emissions from the sea, an important factor to correctly predict pollutant levels. The test is carried out for the August to December 2005 period over the Ligurian Sea region, a very complex area where the strong air-sea interactions and orography significantly affect the atmospheric circulation. Performances of two model versions, WRF-ARW 3.0 and WRF-ARW 3.2.1, applied at two different horizontal resolutions, have been compared. The results show that the new parameterisations introduced in WRF 3.2.1 improve the performance of the model with respect to version 3.2.0. Increasing the model domain resolution from 15 km to 5 km does not generally improve the model performance, except for the wind direction reconstruction. The model proved its reliability as meteorological processor, although further efforts are required to improve wind field simulation, mainly in order to reduce the low bias still affecting the reconstruction at high wind speed.

Keywords: WRF-ARW model; sea salt emissions modelling; model evaluation; AMET software; Ligurian Sea; ODAS Italia 1 buoy data; coastal WMO data; meteorological modelling; aerosol emissions; pollutant levels; simulation; air quality; air pollution; atmospheric dispersion modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2012.051189

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2012 Vol.50 No.1/2/3/4, pp.151 - 163

Published online: 19 Nov 2014 *

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