Sensitivity of the Simulated Atmospheric Circulation to Horizontal Resolution: From Climate to NWP Resolution
Primary Author: Jung, Thomas Additional Authors: Tim Palmer and Frederic Vitart
Sensitivity of the Simulated Atmospheric Circulation to Horizontal Resolution: From Climate to NWP Resolution
Thomas Jung, Tim Palmer and Frederic Vitart
ECMWF
The latest version of the ECMWF model is used to study the sensitivity of various simulated atmospheric phenomena to horizontal resolution. Four different horizontal resolutions are considered: TL95 (180km), TL159 (120km), TL255 (80km) and TL511 (40km). Results are based on seasonal forecast experiments with prescribed SSTs for both summers and winters of the period 1990-2005. In the North Atlantic and North Pacific, increasing horizontal resolution to T511 leads to significant improvements in simulated blocking frequencies. Moreover, it turns out that increasing resolution results in a much better representation of both extratropical and tropical cyclone characteristics (e.g., frequency of occurrence of hurricanes of different intensity). However, there are also model problems, such as the realistic simulation of the MJO, which remain unchanged even if resolution is increased to TL511.
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