Impacts of subgrid-scale orography parameterization on simulated surface layer wind and monsoonal precipitation in the high-resolution WRF model

This paper reports on the first attempt to investigate whether excessive precipitation over mountainous areas, which is a common problem in model simulations, could be remedied by the implementation of a more realistic surface wind field in the high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. A series of 48 h short-range forecasts was conducted for the month of July 2006 within the triple-nested WRF configuration, for which the highest resolution of 3 km was focused on areas with complex orography over East Asian monsoonal regions. For accurate surface wind simulations, the subgrid-scale (SGS) orography parameterization scheme was employed. It was found that the simulated surface wind showed negative (positive) bias over mountainous (flat) regions when the SGS orography parameterization was excluded. After inclusion of the SGS orography parameterization, wind speed over mountainous (flat) regions increased (decreased), implying that the bias was mitigated. Moisture divergence (convergence) over the mountains (on the leeward side of the mountains) was induced, and surface latent heat flux increased along the mountain ranges following the improvement in the representation of the surface wind by the inclusion of the SGS orography parameterization. Eventually, excessive precipitation simulated over mountainous areas of East Asia, which is a feature commonly observed in numerical model studies, was alleviated because of the moisture divergence and increased surface latent heat flux.