Integration of the WRF Model into the Advanced Climate Modeling and Environmental Simulations Program

The Advanced Climate Modeling and Environmental Simulations program (ACMES) was developed to provide quality modeled data that can be used to generate summarized regional climate statistics at times and locations for which climatological values based on observations are not directly available. The ACMES modeling strategy uses a mesocale numerical weather prediction (NWP) model to produce gridded data fields for any region in the world. Currently, the Mesoscale Atmospheric Simulation System (MASS model) is used at the core of this process. The Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) code is an alternative community model which offers unique benefits in terms of modeling the physical processes of the atmosphere and utilization of multiple processors in a parallel processing environment. Hence, a project has been undertaken to integrate the WRF model within ACMES, and this paper summarizes results of the integration effort, and presents specific comparisons between the two NWP models over regions of California and Korea.