Abstract:
The weather forecast of good quality is essential for the humans living and operating in the Bulgarian Antarctic Base (BAB), located on the Livingstone Island coast at 62.64⁰ S and 60.36⁰ W. The numerical weather prediction models in southern high latitude regions still need improvement as the user community is limited, little test cases are documented and validation data are scarce. The modelling system is based on the WRF model, configured in three nested domains down to 1 km horizontal resolution, centered over BAB. The main objective of the study is to configure and validate the WRF model and to recommend certain set-up parameters like model area coverage, topography, land use, vertical levels, physics parametrization schemes, preparation of initial and boundary conditions and run configuration on HPC machines. Three test periods of “bad” weather events are considered during the summer seasons in 2016, 2017 and 2020. The ability of the 3 days forecast to capture the basic meteorological events in this period is discussed. Sensitivity experiments to the land use type are conducted and while the MODIS land data is found to be the most accurate for the region, a slight increase in the soil thermal capacity results in better model performance.