PERFORMANCE OF FORECASTS FROM HIGH RESOLUTION MODELS, IN A LIMITED AREA: ANALYSIS OF THE 2010-2011 SUMMER SEASON.
Mara Eugenia Dillon, Yanina Garca Skabar y Matilde Nicolini
Servicio Meteorológico Nacional. CABA, Argentina .
Cátedra de Climatología y Fenología Agrícolas. Facultad de Agronoma. UBA. CABA, Argentina.
CONICET. CABA, Argentina.
UMI-Instituto Franco Argentino sobre Estudios del Clima y sus Impactos. CABA, Argentina.
Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmosfera CONICET-UBA. CABA, Argentina.
Departamento de Ciencias de la Atmosfera y los Oceanos. FCEyN. UBA. CABA, Argentina
Manuscript received on 1 October 2012, in final form 4 February 2013
ABSTRACT
Nowadays, numerical models constitute an essential tool for the meteorological community, both for operative and research applications. In our region, the BRAMS and the WRF models have been used with different purposes. Particularly, since November 2010, a version of the BRAMS model is processed daily in the National Weather Service with an 18 hours high resolution forecast over Buenos Aires Province. Given the increased use in the scientific community of the WRF model, the objective of this paper is to compare WRF forecasts with the ones that are daily produced by the BRAMS at the SMN, using nests with the resolution higher than any other used in our country in real time. Their performance is evaluated during the South Hemisphere summer season 2010 – 2011. Analyzing the precipitation from the whole period, it was concluded that using higher resolution models, maxima of precipitation could be represented in intense precipitation cases, while they were not detected by smaller resolution models. The vertical thermodynamic profile was also verified in the Ezeiza aerologic station, and it was found that the high resolution models are skillful for representing the atmospheric vertical structure, although they show some limitations in the boundary layer.