Numerical simulation of the Valentine’s day storm during the 1990 winter icing and storms project

Abstract

This paper discusses numerical simulation of the first day of the 1990 winter icing and storms project’s (WISP) Valentine’s day storm (VDS) case with the Purdue mesoscale model (PMM) and comparison of the results to aircraft, satellite, radiometer and other observations. This situation is marked by many observations of supercooled liquid water (SLW) contents of 0.2 g m-3 to 0.3 g m-3 by the WISP research aircraft. The PMM was initialized with the ECMWF analysis for 13 February 1990 at 0000 GMT and used to make an 18-h forecast with output every 6 h. This paper focuses on comparison of the forecast to observations made at about 1800 GMT since the aircraft encountered significant amounts of SLW during its flight between 1723 GMT and 1928 GMT. Dual channel radiometer, satellite visible imagery, and other observational data sources are also utilized. For this study, the PMM includes a new stable cloud parameterization that is discussed here. In it, cloud water and ice are explicitly calculated while rain and snow are implicitly handled. Between 0 and - 40°C, cloud water and cloud ice can coexist; the conversion of cloud water to cloud ice is governed by the depositional growth rate of ice crystals whose concentration is diagnosed on the basis of temperature. After accounting for precipitation, a saturation adjustment is done to remove either supersaturated vapor or subsaturation in the presence of cloud drops. In mixed phase conditions, both saturation vapor pressure and the apportionment of condensate into ice or liquid are on a mass-weighted basis according to the existing amounts of ice and liquid or on the basis of temperature if there is neither.