The UWERN Microscale Project

The microscale modelling project started on 1st January 2003. It was set up and approved as an integral part of UWERN to develop a new microscale model for the UWERN community. The aim was to resolve physical and dynamical scales down to a few metres, and enable resolution of flow over steep terrain and other atmospheric high resolution processes in the atmosphere. It is envisaged that this is a eight plus year project, with a useful lifetime of not less than fifteen years. An objective is to promote input from a wide cross section of the UK community, including other UWERN funded research as well as participation from the UK Met Office and other research institutes.

The first year of the project is to review current requirements and make initial tests of likely schemes, with a design proposal to be proposed in the twelve months time. Scientific issues to be resolved during this review stage include the equation set - e.g. compressible / anelastic etc.-, grid structure, co-ordinate system - variable or nested, data assimilation from existing larger scale models - e.g. UKMO -, representation of orography and vertical terrain following co-ordinates, numerical schemes for advection and timestepping and turbulence schemes.

It is currently envisaged to use Fortran 90 with MPI and net-cdf data output, which will be compatible with standard graphical packages such as IDL and with UWERN diagnostics such as JPLOT.

A series of workshops are planned. The first of these will occur at on March 27th. This web page is continually being upgraded. For the latest changes access this link .

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Alan Gadian: February 2003