A new 24/7 operational workflow in agro-meteorology, based on the coupled WRF/SEBAL models
- 1Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich Supercomputing Center, Jülich, Germany (ah.nikfal@gmail.com)
- 2SRIco (Soroosh Rayaneh Iranian), Tehran, Iran
- 3Guilan University, Rasht, Iran
- 4Brock University, Ontario, Canada
- 5University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Water scarcity is regarded as a primary issue in many dry climates, with significant impacts on food security and national developments. Since agricultural irrigation accounts for most of water consumption worldwide, providing a water management system is critical to cope with water stress and its challenges. Agricultural water management is an interdisciplinary task, dealing with meteorological and environmental factors. In this work, we have established a 24/7 operational system to simulate those land surface variables, associated with evapotranspiration, biomass growth, and water deficit, using the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL). SEBAL simulates the energy balance, using satellite data in shortwave and thermal bands, as well as soil and meteorological data (wind speed, humidity, etc).
This workflow consists of 3 interconnected units: WRF model, Python implementation of the SEBAL model (pySEBAL), and a web-based management panel for the visualization, reanalysis, and publishing the results. The WRF model is run in a daily basis for 36 hours, starting from 12:00 UTC, to provide the meteorological data for the next day. At the next stage, the simulated WRF data after some required processing (converting formats and units of files and
variables, etc.) will be incorporated as input data into the SEBAL model. The key data for the SEBAL model is the “Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer
Suite” (VIIRS) real-time data over the Suomi satellite, which is received automatically after tracking the satellite and picking the appropriate data files for download. SEBAL outputs include some of the variables with key role in agricultural water management, such as actual and potential evapotranspiration, biomass production and deficit, albedo, NDVI, etc, with a resolution of 375m over Iran.
The third section of the operational system is a web-based panel, consisting of an open-source server to share and edit the SEBAL outputs. An open-source database management system for the client- based analysis of the SEBAL outputs, and an open-source JavaScript library for displaying the maps of the SEBAL outputs in web browsers.
How to cite: Nikfal, A., Karimi, M., Pashapour, S., Vazifedoust, M., Khorani, M., Khosravi Tabrizi, A., Noory, H., Rezvani, M., and Toofaninejad, Z.: A new 24/7 operational workflow in agro-meteorology, based on the coupled WRF/SEBAL models, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-1901, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-1901, 2023.
