COLLEGE PARK, Md. – University of Maryland’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center researcher Dr. Xin-Zhong Liang, also a professor in the CMNS-Atmospheric & Oceanic Science Department, released a regional climate model Fe. 17 called the Climate-Weather Research Forecasting Model (CWRF), a significant extension of the original Weather Research Forecasting Model (WRF). The model has been ten years in the making by Dr. Liang’s team in collaboration with NOAA and NCAR, and facilitates the use of an optimized physics ensemble approach to improve weather forecast or climate prediction and their impacts on terrestrial hydrology, coastal oceans, crop growth, air quality, water quality and ecosystems.
The model meets users’ needs to simulate climate variability and change in the past and future at regional-local scales and predict consequences on the above mentioned areas. The model is in high demand in the climate prediction community, and has already been heavily cited since its development and before public release. The model and simulation data also offer potential applications by end-users and policy makers for decision making and planning processes. (See “Climate Information: Responding to User Needs (CIRUN)”).
Dr. Liang et al. had their paper on CWRF accepted to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Feb. 28, where it is has generated large responses within the scientific and climate forecasting community.
The CWRF source code can be found here.
An article featuring the model published in NOAA Climate Prediction Science and Technology Digest can be found here.
(Related: See the “Featured-@-ESSIC” article on CWRF here.)
