The 30^th BMB-NCAR Project Meeting

Time: 7:30 pm~9:00 pm, 17 October, 2006

NCAR/MMM Participants: Dir Kuo, Dr Huang and Dr Wang

IUM Participants: Dir Wang, Dir Zhang, Min Chen, Shui-yong Fan, Zuofang Zheng and Jiqin Zhong

1. About the WRF version, Dr Wang suggested that both IUM and NCAR staff could use the version 2.2, which will be released in the end of November, 2006 as a common start. IUM staff can download the version compatible with WPS from the web for current relating work such as OSE and cycling script setup. Dr Wang will send an early release version in the end of October. NCAR staff will provide technical support about the bug fix for interface between WPS and WRFVAR/WRF.

2. The west boundaries of the current 3km/27km domain are exactly over the complex terrain. Therefore, the 3km/27km domains were ever considered need to be expanded toward west to avoid a series of troubles relating to terrain. After discussion, both NCAR and IUM agree that we should still keep the current domain configuration as the operational setup due to the fact that we can’t afford so many major changes in an operational system simultaneously. The expanded domains could be tested when the computational resources of BMB are upgraded in the future.

3. NCAR staff suggested that a package of standard cases and testing period should be setup to evaluate the performance of operational forecast system when any modifications are made. To meet the demand of Olympic meteorological service, IUM will select the two weeks from 23 July to 9 August 2006 as the standard testing period for the new WRF model system. There are around 7 severe rain storm cases during this period.

4. NCAR staff considered that the original planned 3km/3hour RUC was a little bit risky now. But the requirement from B08FDP is the 3-hour updated model output with 3-km resolution. As an intermediate solution, IUM will set up a 9km/6-hour model cycle before the end of 2006; and a 9km/3-hour model cycle system is scheduled to be set up on the basis of good performance and experience of 9km/6-hour cycle before the end of March, 2007.

5. For OSE, Dr Huang suggested that Jiqin can perform preliminary experiments in the 27km domain to evaluate the significance of different type of data of GTS. In addition, IUM will construct a web page for communication between NCAR and IUM.