Evaluation of WRF Model Against Satellite and Field Measurements During ARM March 2000 IOP

Meso-scale WRF model is employed to simulate the organization of clouds related with the cyclogenesis occurred during March 1-4, 2000 over ARM SGP CART site. Qualitative comparisons of simulated clouds with GOES8 satellite images show that the WRF model can capture the main features of clouds related with the cyclogenesis. The simulated precipitation patterns also match the Radar reflectivity images well. Further evaluation of the simulated features on GCM grid-scale is conducted against ARM field measurements. The evaluation shows that the evolutions of the simulated state fields such as temperature and moisture, the simulated wind fields and the derived large-scale temperature and moisture tendencies closely follow the observed patterns. These results encourages us to use meso-scale WRF model as a tool to verify the performance of GCMs in simulating cloud feedback processes related with the frontal clouds such that we can test and validate the current cloud parameterizations in climate models, and make possible improvements to different components of current cloud parameterizations in GCMs.