Send article to a friendPrint

Mesoscale models

Mesoscale models are numerical tools. They are solving the conservation equations of mass, momentum, internal energy, and for various species like water vapour. Mesoscale models simulate atmospheric processes on a spatial scale from 20 to 1000 km and resolve temporal fluctuations lasting 1 to 12 hours. Processes not explicitly resolved by the mesoscale model (e.g. boundary-layer turbulence, convective mixing) are parameterised.

Mesoscale models are normally specialised for particular applications such as local weather forecast or process studies. Therefore a set of differrent numerical mesoscale models is used at IPA for different applications (e.g. the own developments MESOSCOP and REWIH3D, the model LM of the German Weather Service, or the model MM5 of NCAR). Major applications of mesoscale model simulations are convective storms and heavy precipitation simulations, and calculations for regional climate studies.