Downscaling mesoscale meteorological models for computational wind engineering applications

Abstract

Considerable interest exists in joining the capabilities of mesoscale meteorological models (MMM) with those of computational wind engineering (CWE) models to produce realistic simulations, which address emerging issues in wind engineering and environmental applications. The model equations are similar for MMM and CWE, but there are significant differences in the objectives and approaches. Complete synthesis of these models is still premature and computational burdens are enormous. Appropriate procedures for joining these models have not been established yet and measurement data required for verification is limited. For convenience in presentations and discussions, coupling methods are divided into four groups: (1) coupling MMM and CWE models for up-scaling or downscaling, (2) up-scaling a CWE model to include the mesoscale meteorological influences, (3) downscaling an MMM to include the CWE capabilities, and (4) a combination of the above three approaches. Mochida et al. (this issue) focuses on up-scaling CWE from an engineering point of view and the present paper focuses on downscaling MMM from a meteorological point of view. Topics addressed here are (1) to understand the differences in the purposes and approaches of MMM and CWE models and (2) to identify issues and explore ways of coupling MMM and CWE modeling capabilities.