Evaluation of the WRF Model with Different Land Surface Schemes: A Drought Event Simulation in Southwest China During 2009–10

Abstract

AbstractThe authors examined the performance of version 3.4.1 of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) with various land surface schemes in simulating a severe drought event in Southwest China. Five numerical experiments were completed using the Noah land surface scheme, the Pleim-Xiu land surface scheme, the Noah-MP land surface schemes, the Noah-MP scheme with dynamic vegetation, and the Noah-MP scheme with dynamic vegetation and groundwater processes. In general, all the simulations reasonably reproduced the spatial and temporal variations in precipitation, but significant bias was also found, especially for the spatial pattern of simulated precipitation. The WRF simulations with the Noah-MP series land surface schemes per-formed slightly better than the WRF simulation with the Noah and Pleim-Xiu land surface schemes in reproducing the severe drought events in Southwest China. The leaf area index (LAI) simulated by the different land surface schemes showed significant deviations in Southwest...