4/3-km Simulations of WRF version 3.1 for December 2008 Windstorm

The Problem

This image at right shows the fine-scale striations in low-level cloud water that are particularly unrealistic over the open ocean. Here is a loop showing how that low-level cloud field develops in time, and here is another showing how the 1-hour precipitation evolves.

Here is what the 1-km visible satellite imagery shows for this period, and here is a high resolution MODIS image and a lower resolution MODIS image. Here is the Quillayute sounding for 0Z on the 8th.

Working on Solutions

To help fix this, several approaches have been tried:
1) turning off the cumulus scheme for this domain
2) turning on 6th-order diffusion in various amounts.
The loops in this table illustrate the attempts and how they impact the simulations.
DomainProductHourCases (control click to select multiple)
Description of WRF namelist options.
qclst std loop