Numerical Forecasting of Radiation Fog. Part I: Numerical Model and Sensitivity Tests

Abstract

To improve the forecast of dense radiative fogs, a method has been developed using a one-dimensional model of the nocturnal boundary layer forced by the mesoscale fields provided by a 3D limited-area operational model. The 1D model involves a treatment of soil-atmosphere exchanges and a parameterization of turbulence in stable layers in order to correctly simulate the nocturnal atmospheric cooling. Various sensitivity tests have been carried out to evaluate the influence of the main input parameters of the model (geostrophic wind, horizontal advections, cloud cover, soil moisture, etc.) on the predicted fog characteristics. The principal result concerns the difficulty of obtaining accurate forecasts in the case of fog appearing in the middle or at the end of the night, when the local atmospheric cooling is weak.