EGU2020-19860
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-19860
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Evaluation of next day fog forecast over Namibia using the WRF model

Michael Weston1, Stuart Piketh1, Paola Formenti2, Stephen Brocardo3, Hendrik Andersen4, and Roland Voogt5
Michael Weston et al.
  • 1North-West University, School of Geo- and Spatial Science, South Africa
  • 2CNRS, Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques (LISA, UMR 7583), France
  • 3NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, United States
  • 4Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Karlsruhe, Germany
  • 5University of Basel, MCR (meteorology, climatology, remote sensing), Switzerland

The Namibian coast line experiences fog when moist air from the southeast Atlantic is advected
over the desert landscape. We run the WRF model with the Thompson (2008) microphysics scheme,
with a default CCN number concentration of 100 cm-1, to forecast next day fog over the Namib
desert. Model output of liquid water content at the lowest level in the atmosphere is used to
represent fog and is evaluated against in situ observations of visibility and satellite products of
fog/low stratus. Preliminary results indicate that the model captures the spatial pattern of fog
excellently, however, the model over predicts fog occurrence. These results serve as the control run
for a future model sensitivity study.

How to cite: Weston, M., Piketh, S., Formenti, P., Brocardo, S., Andersen, H., and Voogt, R.: Evaluation of next day fog forecast over Namibia using the WRF model, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-19860, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-19860, 2020

This abstract will not be presented.