Evaluation of WRF microphysics and cumulus parameterization schemes in simulating a heavy rainfall event over Yangtze River delta

Abstract

The Weather Research and Forecast Model (WRF) version 3.5 has been used in this study to simulate a heavy rainfall event during the Meiyu season that occurred between 1 and 2 July 2014 over the Yangtze River valley (YRV) in China. The WRF model is driven by the National Centers for Environmental Predictions (NCEP) Final (FNL) global tropospheric analysis data, and eight WRF nested experiments using four different microphysics (MP) schemes and two cumulus parameterizations (CP) are conducted to evaluate the effects of these microphysics and cumulus schemes on heavy rainfall predictions over YRV region. The four MPs selected in this study are Lin et al., WRF Single-Moment 3-class scheme (WSM3), WRF Single-Moment 5-class scheme (WSM5) and WRF Single-Moment 6-class scheme (WSM6), and the two CPs are Kain-Fristch (KF) and Betts-Miller-Janjic (BMJ) schemes. Sensitivity studies showed that all MPs coupling with KF and BMJ CP schemes can well capture the major rain belt from the northeast to southwest with three rainfall centers, but largely overestimate the rainfall near the border between Anhui and Hubei provinces along with the Yellow Sea shore, which produce an opposite trend compared to the observations. Large discrepancies are also presented in WRF simulations of heavy rainfall centers regarding their locations and magnitudes. All MPs coupling with KF CP scheme produced the rainfall areas shifting towards east compared to the observations, while all MPs with BMJ CP scheme tend to better predict the rainfall patterns with slightly more fake precipitation centers. Among all the experiments, the BMJ cumulus scheme has superiority in simulating the Meiyu rainfall over the KF scheme, and the WSM5–BMJ combination shows the best predictive skills.