Testing the performance of different WRF planetary boundary layer parameterizations schemes in the precipitation simulation under different Weather Regimes

Surface meteorology is dominated by atmospheric boundary layer processes. Due to their typical low spatial resolution, numerical weather prediction models are not able to explicitly resolve such sub-grid scale processes, and as such use physical parameterization schemes to implicitly take into account these processes' influence on atmospheric variables. It is well known that the performance of such physical parameterization schemes depends on the atmospheric state of each location, season, etc.

This work aims to investigate the performance of six different WRF PBL parameterization schemes in the simulation of the precipitation over continental Portugal, under different weather regimes, or weather types. For this, a set of six weather regimes, which represent 96% of Portugal's atmospheric states were identified and for each WR, six different PBL parameterization schemes were tested.

Preliminary results show that for the entire region, the lowest spacial mean difference between observations and simulations is shown by the TEMF scheme parameterization for the positive phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO +) and Scandinavian height Weather Regimes,  MYJ for Summer Pattern, Anti-blocking (AB) and negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO -), and ACM2 scheme for Blocking (BLO) Weather Regime.