Optical Turbulence Characterization by WRF model above Ali, Tibet

Abstract

Atmospheric optical turbulence modeling and forecast for astronomy is a relatively recent discipline, but has played important roles in site survey, optimization of large telescope observing tables, and in the applications of adaptive optics technique. The numerical approach, by using of meteorological parameters and parameterization of optical turbulence, can provide all the optical turbulence parameters related, such as C2n profile, coherent length, wavefront coherent time, seeing, isoplanatic angle, and so on. This is particularly interesting for searching new sites without the long and expensive site testing campaigns with instruments. Earlier site survey results by the site survey team of National Astronomical Observatories of China imply that the south-west Tibet, Ali, is one of the world best IR and sub-mm site. For searching the best site in Ali area, numerical approach by Weather and Research Forecasting (WRF) model had been used to evaluate the climatology of the optical turbulence. The WRF model is configured over a domain 200km×200km with 1km horizontal resolution and 65 vertical levels from ground to the model top(10millibars) in 2010. The initial and boundary conditions for the model are provided by the 1° × 1° Global Final Analysis data from NCEP. The distribution and seasonal variation of optical turbulence parameters over this area are presented.