Overview
The key result of this work is establishing a base of weather simulation leading to higher resolved, local forecasts of critical events in North Carolina. Local forecasts are currently not part of the National Weather Service toolkit for producing daily forecasts. There are several approaches for demonstrating improvement in forecasts, including, 1) refining the model another 9 times to 1.3km by incorporating many local NC observational datasets, 2) running of ensemble models, that is, simultaneous running of multiple model configurations to reduce uncertainty from using a single forecast, and 3) using North Carolina-focused WRF predictions to drive other models such as hurricane storm surge and flood models.
Real time visualization of WRF simulation is overlaid onto a high-resolution, geocentrically-projected virtual globe with NASA Blue Marble Next Generation imagery. This will include wind vectors on multiple altitudes, pressure, temperature, precipitation, and water mixing ratios, all of which may be viewed from either a ground-based terrain following interaction technique or a third person trackball-style manipulation. The mass points of the WRF grid are represented with small spheres, which have vectors protruding in order to describe the wind direction at that mass point. The remainder of the variables will be represented with a combination of isosurfaces and contours.
This graphic shows the model output at a 4km over North Carolina. At this resolution, the model shows the influence of the mountainous terrain in western North Carolina on temperature, and ocean-land influences on winds along the coastline.
Project Team
Jason Coposky
