Improving the Simulation of the West African Monsoon Using the MIT Regional Climate Model
This paper presents an evaluation of the performance of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) regional climate model (MRCM) in simulating the West African monsoon. The MRCM is built on the Regional Climate Model, version 3 (RegCM3), but with several improvements, including coupling of Inte...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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American Meteorological Society
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/91279 |
| _version_ | 1826207229574905856 |
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| author | Im, Eun-Soon Gianotti, Rebecca Louise Eltahir, Elfatih A. B. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Im, Eun-Soon Gianotti, Rebecca Louise Eltahir, Elfatih A. B. |
| author_sort | Im, Eun-Soon |
| collection | MIT |
| description | This paper presents an evaluation of the performance of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) regional climate model (MRCM) in simulating the West African monsoon. The MRCM is built on the Regional Climate Model, version 3 (RegCM3), but with several improvements, including coupling of Integrated Biosphere Simulator (IBIS) land surface scheme, a new surface albedo assignment method, new convective cloud and convective rainfall autoconversion schemes, and a modified scheme for simulating boundary layer height and boundary layer clouds. To investigate the impact of these more physically realistic representations when incorporated into MRCM, a series of experiments were carried out implementing two land surface schemes [IBIS with a new albedo assignment, and the Biosphere–Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS)] and two convection schemes (Grell with the Fritsch–Chappell closure, and Emanuel in both the default form and modified with the new convective cloud cover and a rainfall autoconversion scheme). The analysis primarily focuses on comparing the rainfall characteristics, surface energy balance, and large-scale circulations against various observations. This work documents significant sensitivity in simulation of the West African monsoon to the choices of the land surface and convection schemes. Despite several deficiencies, the simulation with the combination of IBIS and the modified Emanuel scheme with the new convective cloud cover and a rainfall autoconversion scheme shows the best performance with respect to the spatial distribution of rainfall and the dynamics of the monsoon. The coupling of IBIS leads to representations of the surface energy balance and partitioning that show better agreement with observations compared to BATS. The IBIS simulations also reasonably reproduce the dynamical structures of the West African monsoon circulation. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:46:03Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/91279 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:46:03Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | American Meteorological Society |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/912792022-09-28T16:00:34Z Improving the Simulation of the West African Monsoon Using the MIT Regional Climate Model Im, Eun-Soon Gianotti, Rebecca Louise Eltahir, Elfatih A. B. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Parsons Laboratory for Environmental Science and Engineering (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Eltahir, Elfatih A. B. Gianotti, Rebecca Louise This paper presents an evaluation of the performance of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) regional climate model (MRCM) in simulating the West African monsoon. The MRCM is built on the Regional Climate Model, version 3 (RegCM3), but with several improvements, including coupling of Integrated Biosphere Simulator (IBIS) land surface scheme, a new surface albedo assignment method, new convective cloud and convective rainfall autoconversion schemes, and a modified scheme for simulating boundary layer height and boundary layer clouds. To investigate the impact of these more physically realistic representations when incorporated into MRCM, a series of experiments were carried out implementing two land surface schemes [IBIS with a new albedo assignment, and the Biosphere–Atmosphere Transfer Scheme (BATS)] and two convection schemes (Grell with the Fritsch–Chappell closure, and Emanuel in both the default form and modified with the new convective cloud cover and a rainfall autoconversion scheme). The analysis primarily focuses on comparing the rainfall characteristics, surface energy balance, and large-scale circulations against various observations. This work documents significant sensitivity in simulation of the West African monsoon to the choices of the land surface and convection schemes. Despite several deficiencies, the simulation with the combination of IBIS and the modified Emanuel scheme with the new convective cloud cover and a rainfall autoconversion scheme shows the best performance with respect to the spatial distribution of rainfall and the dynamics of the monsoon. The coupling of IBIS leads to representations of the surface energy balance and partitioning that show better agreement with observations compared to BATS. The IBIS simulations also reasonably reproduce the dynamical structures of the West African monsoon circulation. Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. Center for Environmental Sensing and Modeling 2014-11-04T14:04:19Z 2014-11-04T14:04:19Z 2014-03 2013-11 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0894-8755 1520-0442 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/91279 Im, Eun-Soon, Rebecca L. Gianotti, and Elfatih A. B. Eltahir. “Improving the Simulation of the West African Monsoon Using the MIT Regional Climate Model.” J. Climate 27, no. 6 (March 2014): 2209–2229. © 2014 American Meteorological Society en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00188.1 Journal of Climate Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf American Meteorological Society American Meteorological Society |
| spellingShingle | Im, Eun-Soon Gianotti, Rebecca Louise Eltahir, Elfatih A. B. Improving the Simulation of the West African Monsoon Using the MIT Regional Climate Model |
| title | Improving the Simulation of the West African Monsoon Using the MIT Regional Climate Model |
| title_full | Improving the Simulation of the West African Monsoon Using the MIT Regional Climate Model |
| title_fullStr | Improving the Simulation of the West African Monsoon Using the MIT Regional Climate Model |
| title_full_unstemmed | Improving the Simulation of the West African Monsoon Using the MIT Regional Climate Model |
| title_short | Improving the Simulation of the West African Monsoon Using the MIT Regional Climate Model |
| title_sort | improving the simulation of the west african monsoon using the mit regional climate model |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/91279 |
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