Comparative analysis of the meteorological elements simulated by different land surface process schemes in the WRF model in the Yellow River source region

Abstract

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model was employed to simulate the water and energy process over the near surface in the Yellow River source region from July to September 2015. The Rapid Update Cycle (RUC), Noah, Noah-Multi-Physics (Noah-MP), and Community Land Model (CLM) version 4 land surface schemes were selected and evaluated in our experiments. The simulated results were also compared with the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) outputs, the ground-based automatic weather stations (AWSs), and the Zoige plateau wetlands ecosystem research flux station data. There was substantial agreement between the results of the simulations and observations in terms of 2-m temperature and relative humidity. However, the simulated values of the 2-m temperature were mostly lower than observations, while the values of relative humidity were higher than the observations. The correlation coefficients (R) between the simulations and observations of air temperature in four experiments were all higher than 0.94, and simulated results of the WRF-RUC experiment had the minimum bias compared with other experiments. The root mean square error (RMSE) and bias of 2-m relative humidity between the WRF-CLM4 simulations and observations were lower than other experiments. Moreover, the simulation of the 10-cm soil temperature was lower than the observations. WRF-CLM4 simulations agreed better with the observations, and WRF-Noah-MP simulations had the largest bias in all of the experiments. The soil moisture increased rapidly when precipitation was occurring and decreased slowly after the precipitation. The four experiments overestimate precipitation leading to higher soil moisture compared with the real situations. The peak value of net radiation was appropriately 850 W/m2 during the summertime in the Zoige plateau area. The simulated net radiation agreed well with the observation except in the WRF-RUC scheme. During the summertime, vegetation grew rapidly, and the latent heat flux transport increased and played a dominant role in surface energy transport in the Zoige area. The RMSE between the simulation and observation of latent heat flux had the minimum value of 98.0 W/m2 in the WRF-CLM4 scheme, and the bias of sensible heat flux had the minimum value of 15.4 W/m2 in the WRF-Noah scheme. This study used the WRF model to explore the applicability of the different land surface schemes in the Zoige plateau area. The research related to this study can be used to understand the water-energy cycle process over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau wetland and can also provide references for the application of regional meteorological models over this area.