Mesoscale Simulations of Atmospheric Flow in Complex Terrain

The MIUU mesoscale model was further developed, in order to include information on large-scale atmospheric fields from global or regional atmospheric climate- and weather-prediction models. For this purpose, a new lateral boundary condition was developed and implemented into the model. The new lateral boundary condition is a combination of two existing conditions, namely the flow relaxation scheme and the tendency modification scheme. Tests indicated that an optimum lateral boundary configuration would be obtained with moderate to strong flow relaxation at higher levels, small flow relaxation at lower levels (within the atmospheric boundary layer), upstream advection at the outermost 4 grid points, and 6% horizontal grid stretching starting at a substantial distance from the lateral boundaries. The flow relaxation coefficients should be specified carefully, in order to minimize the reflection of all kinds of waves at the lateral boundaries. The summer thermal low in the mean-sea-level pressure field over North America is traditionally analyzed over the northern end of the Gulf of California. The position of this low is influenced by the application of the so-called plateau correction in obtaining mean-sea-level pressure values from highly elevated stations in North America. A model study indicated that the low should be located approximately 450 km to the north and somewhat to the east of the above location. A statistical comparison of model results from two mesoscale models against upper-air and surface measurements from several sites was carried out. Statistical methods, however, give only an insufficient picture of overall model performance. A comparison between predicted and measured tracer concentrations could be used to better evaluate the overall performance of different models. Sound propagation in the atmosphere was predicted in a mountain valley using a mesoscale atmospheric model together with a sound propagation model. This suggests that forecasts of sound propagation should be possible in future.