Advanced Research WRF (ARW)

Focus: To develop, maintain, and support the Advanced Research WRF model as the leading community mesoscale model in the world.

The Advanced Research WRF (ARW) effort in MMM built upon the experience gained through its previous development and community support of the MM5 model. With the emergence of WRF, MMM transitioned to providing community support for the new mesoscale NWP system. Since the early 2000's MMM has thus been providing WRF system support and related oversight to the community, while helping to develop the ARW. This began as a subset of codes from the WRF system centered around the ARW dynamics solver (originally known as the mass core), and it was designed to serve research and NWP needs of atmospheric scientists.

The ARW offers portable codes permitting a wide range of applications. The goal has been for the ARW to be versatile and state-of-the-science, built with research community input and guided by research community needs. It has idealized and real-data simulation capabilities, the WRFDA data assimilation system, interactive grid nesting, movable grids, model coupling framework compatibilities, and a host of physics and dynamics options. New features are implemented as they are contributed by the worldwide user community.

Development of the ARW reflects the research directions and needs of MMM, the needs of agencies funding specific capabilities, and the scientific desires and interests of community contributors. MMM interacts with the WRF working groups and the DTC (Developmental Testbed Center) to coordinate development and testing with the broader WRF program and to document system components. MMM is responsible for oversight of the WRF repository (managed by the Developers' Committee) and of WRF releases (managed by the Release Committee). MMM also is a key organizer and host of the annual WRF users' workshops.

WRF also offers specialized coupled models, such as WRF-Chem for air chemistry simulation and WRF-Fire for wildland fire simulation. WRF-Fire, released in WRF V3.2, can represent the evolution of a wildfire in response to atmospheric conditions (e.g., wind, humidity) as well as the feedbacks of the fire upon the atmosphere (e.g., through sensible heating). WRF-Chem, which in V3.2 works with both the ARW and NMM solvers, allows users to produce air quality and air chemistry simulations/forecasts. For details on WRF, please see http://www.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users.

 

Hurricane track and wind intensity forecast produced by WRF-ARW during Hurricane Katrina, 2005.

 

Related Links

The WRF Website

The WRF-ARW Users Website

The WRF Users' Forum