GMD Geoscientific Model Development GMD Geosci. Model Dev. 1991-9603 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/gmd-7-1641-2014 Influence of high-resolution surface databases on the modeling of local atmospheric circulation systems Paiva L. M. S. 1 Bodstein G. C. R. 2 Pimentel L. C. G. 2 Federal Center of Technological Education, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 14 08 2014 7 4 1641 1659 Copyright: © 2014 L. M. S. Paiva et al. 2014 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/7/1641/2014/gmd-7-1641-2014.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/7/1641/2014/gmd-7-1641-2014.pdf

Large-eddy simulations are performed using the Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS) code at horizontal grid resolutions as fine as 300 m to assess the influence of detailed and updated surface databases on the modeling of local atmospheric circulation systems of urban areas with complex terrain. Applications to air pollution and wind energy are sought. These databases are comprised of 3 arc-sec topographic data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, 10 arc-sec vegetation-type data from the European Space Agency (ESA) GlobCover project, and 30 arc-sec leaf area index and fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation data from the ESA GlobCarbon project. Simulations are carried out for the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro using six one-way nested-grid domains that allow the choice of distinct parametric models and vertical resolutions associated to each grid. ARPS is initialized using the Global Forecasting System with 0.5°-resolution data from the National Center of Environmental Prediction, which is also used every 3 h as lateral boundary condition. Topographic shading is turned on and two soil layers are used to compute the soil temperature and moisture budgets in all runs. Results for two simulated runs covering three periods of time are compared to surface and upper-air observational data to explore the dependence of the simulations on initial and boundary conditions, grid resolution, topographic and land-use databases. Our comparisons show overall good agreement between simulated and observational data, mainly for the potential temperature and the wind speed fields, and clearly indicate that the use of high-resolution databases improves significantly our ability to predict the local atmospheric circulation.

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