An Investigation of an Arctic Front with a Vertically Nested Mesoscale Model

Abstract

A vertically mesoscale regional numerical weather prediction model is used to simulate an arctic front. The front was observed during the Arctic Cyclone Expedition of 1984. The regional model employs a unique vertical nesting scheme in which the dynamics computations are performed on a low vertical-resolution (coarse) grid and the physics computations are performed on a high vertical resolution (fine) grid nested within the coarse grid. Turbulent fluxes are parameterized using a second-order closure approach. The model forecast compares favorably with the observations. Moreover, the model develops detailed mesoscale and boundary layer structure that verifies against the observations when initialized using only sparse, synoptic-scale data. A control experiment is run in which identical, high vertical resolution is used on both the dynamics and the physics grids. Several additional simulations are performed in order to demonstrate the utility and accuracy of the vertical nesting methodology. With the typical nested configuration (14 coarse grid levels, 24 fine levels), the evolution of the front is nearly identical to the control. When the resolution is degraded to 14 points on both grids, significant structural differences in the boundary layer arise. The terms of the frontogenetic forcing function are evaluated in each of the experiments. In all of the simulators, the horizontal deformation is the dominant frontogenetic effect while the tilting term is the dominant frontolytic term for this arctic front, just as it is for midlatitude cold fronts. The diabatic term is predominantly frontolytic with the strongest heating occurring in the cold air as the front moves off the ice edge and out over the Barents Sea. In an experiment in which surface sensible and latent heat fluxes are deleted, a slightly stronger front having more pronounced ageostropic circulation develops.