The annual WRF users' event will take place at the NCAR's Center Green Campus, Boulder, Colorado, on 25 - 29 June 2012
June 25 (1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.): Fundamentals of WRF Physics (Part 3: Convection Parameterization)
June 26 - 28: The 13th WRF Users' Workshop
June 29 (Friday morning): Instructional Sessions (Regional Climate Downscaling Tutorial, Introduction to Verification Methods, IDV, NCL, and VAPOR.)
The objectives of the Users' Workshop are to discuss model development and to evaluate the model's performance. Papers focusing on development and testing in all areas of model applications are especially encouraged. Authors may request either a poster or oral presentation. We would like authors to consider submission for a poster presentation due to time contraints for oral sessions.
To submit an abstract please go to the registration page.
The Workshop schedule will be posted on the web by June 1.
Short tutorial sessions will be offered for:
Regional Climate Downscaling Tutorial (8:00am – 12:30pm)
This tutorial provides a broad overview of the use of the WRF model as a regional climate model. Topics that will be discussed during this 4-hour session will include:
IDV (8:00 am - 10:00 am)
(http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/idv)
Unidata's Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) is a freely available, multiplatform visualization and analysis tool for interdisciplinary geoscience data. The IDV brings together the ability to display and work with a wide range of data including satellite imagery, gridded data, observations and radar data, all within a unified interface.
Participants are required to furnish their own laptop computers and to be adept at installing and configuring new software on their machines. The IDV are Java-based applications that require Java 1.6. The user’s machine must provide full OpenGL video support and be configured with at least 1 GB of RAM (2 GB or more is strongly recommended).
VAPOR (8:00 am - 10:00 am)
This tutorial is a hands-on course, presenting a variety of techniques for understanding WRF output through the use of 3D visualization. The goal is to enable attendees to easily use 3D graphics and animation in the analysis of WRF output. Attendees are not expected to be familiar with 3D graphics. The visualization will be performed using VAPOR (http://www.vapor.edu), an interactive visualization tool that has been developed at NCAR for the understanding of turbulence data. This course will be held at the NCAR CTTC computer classroom in building CG2, a short walk from the WRF workshop in building CG1. Attendance is limited to 32, with one or two attendees per computer.
Introduction to Verification Methods (10:30 am - 12:00 pm)
Model evaluation and forecast verification are essential to model development. This course will introduce basic statistics and graphics for evaluating numerical forecasts. Particular attention will be paid to planning and understanding evaluations. Statistics for deterministic, categorical, probabilistic and ensemble forecasts will all be presented.
More on basic verification concepts can be found at: http://www.cawcr.gov.au/projects/verification
NCL (10:30 am - 12:00 pm)
The NCAR Command Language (NCL) is a scripting language designed specifically for the analysis and visualization of geoscientific data. Some of the data formats it supports include NetCDF, GRIB1, GRIB2, shapefile, HDF4, HDF-EOS2, and HDF-EOS5. Its visualizations are world-class and highly customizable. This session will give participants an overview of the capabilities of NCL including new features, and will focus mostly on how to display WRF model data.
During the workshop, the WRF helpdesk will be open for several sessions for users to discuss their special issues with developers.
All workshop activities will be finished by noon Friday, 29 June 2012.
Short abstract submission: 30 April
Extended abstract submission: 8 June
Early registration ends: 1 June
Late registration begins: 2 June
After 8 June 2012: No refunds for cancellations
Short abstracts will be distributed during the workshop. Workshop presentations and extended abstracts will be published on the web (you may indicate that you do NOT want us to publish your materials, when you submit it). Extended abstracts in PDF format can be submitted via the registration page, and will appear on the web before the workshop.
The early registration fee is $200.00. If you register after 1 June, the registration fee will be $250.00.
Blocks of hotel rooms are reserved at 3 local hotels. More information about the workshop location and lodging is available at the "Travel/Lodging" link.
Jimy Dudhia, Georg Grell, Joe Klemp, Cliff Mass, Louisa Nance, Jordan Powers, and Wei Wang