High-resolution global weather simulations with the Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS)#
Thomas Schwitalla (University of Hohenheim)
Abstract#
Recently, the frequency of extreme events like droughts, heatwaves, storms, and heavy precipitation dramatically increased all over the world. Therefore, it is essential to accurately predict such events with a sufficient forecast lead time. As these extreme events are usually triggered by special large-scale circulation pattern, this raises the question if the traditional high-resolution limited area model (LAM) approach to predict such events is still valid. Current operational global numerical weather prediction (NWP) models mostly operate on horizontal resolutions in the range of 10 km. However, several recent studies have shown that a higher model resolution is required to enhance the forecast quality of extreme events and also the simulation of clouds which play a major role in the Earth’s radiation balance. I will give a brief introduction about the NWP model MPAS, its I/O and code performance on the HLRS Hawk system. In addition, I will also present first results of applying the NWP model MPAS on the global scale using horizontal grid increments of 3 km or less.