ASSESSING PERFORMANCE OF NCEP RAPID REFRESH MODEL TO PREDICT BOUNDARY LAYER PROPERTIES

Author

David Daniel, CUNY City College

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Engineering

First Advisor

Barry Gross

Keywords

Atmospheric, NOAA, Rapid Refresh, AIRS Mission, aerosol retrieval

Abstract

There is a need to be able to estimate the relative humidity in the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) since relative humidity can affect aerosol retrieval. Satellite retrievals of Relative Humidity are extremely complicated since they need to resolve 1km vertical resolution for temperature and water vapor. The AIRS hyperspectral sensor may be able to retrieve relative humidity with 20% RMSE but low correlations with R² – 0.4. The alternative is to explore meteorological forecasts (i.e. Rapid Refresh) to see if we can use them in the processing stream for aerosols. While the state of delay zero is assimilated, the following forecasts for large enough delay can be used to provide PBL integrated RH that can be used in modified aerosol retrieval models to modify aerosol models and/or provide useful diagnostic flags during the retrieval. We find that even for 18 hr. forecasts, the RMSE errors are < 15% which is significantly better that AIRS sensor retrievals.

Recommended Citation

Daniel, David, "ASSESSING PERFORMANCE OF NCEP RAPID REFRESH MODEL TO PREDICT BOUNDARY LAYER PROPERTIES" (2013). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/644