West-WRF 40-year Reanalysis: Description and Performance

High-resolution atmospheric reanalysis datasets that improve upon existing global reanalyses are needed for decision support and for building climate resilience. The West-WRF model, a version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model optimized for the representation of Atmospheric Rivers and precipitation over California, is used to create a 40-year (1982-2022) reanalysis that downscales the ERA5 global reanalysis over the region of the entire Western U.S and offshore North Pacific. The West-WRF downscaling produces atmospheric data at 2-km grid spacing, along with an associated 6-km downscaling over a larger enveloping domain. West-WRF has been extensively used for weather and climate applications over California, including 1) wet season near-real time (NRT) operational forecasts (since 2015) over California and the Western U.S.; 2) 34-year reforecast in support of streamflow forecasting operations by the California-Nevada River Forecast Center (supported by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and run on Onyx); and 3) numerous research applications. Goals of the West-WRF Reanalysis is to optimally represent heavy precipitation events over California, primarily associated with Atmospheric Rivers, along with providing fine-scale description of a broad set of other weather and climate extremes. This project derives support from the California Energy Commission and from the USACE, which is providing vital computational resources. Simulations are currently being run on Carpenter to complete the 40 years of simulation. The configuration of the West-WRF reanalysis will be described, including the workflow processes used on Carpenter. Several validation and applications of the reanalysis output will also be shown.

PRESENTER

Daniel, Steinhoff
dsteinhoff@ucsd.edu
303-913-6438

CW3E / SIO / UCSD

CO-AUTHORS

Cayan, Daniel
dcayan@ucsd.edu

Delle Monache, Luca
ldellemonache@ucsd.edu

Ralph, Marty
mralph@ucsd.edu

Mascioli, Nora
nmascioli@ucsd.edu

Papadopoulos, Caroline
cpapadop@ucsd.edu

Gruzien, Colin
cgrudzien@ucsd.edu

DeHaan, Laurel
ldehaan@ucsd.edu

Clemesha, Rachel
rclemesha@ucsd.edu

CATEGORY

Climate, Weather, Ocean Modeling

SYSTEMS USED

Carpenter

SECRET

No