WRF

Expedition WRF weather simulations

Expedition WRF is best thought of as a system to add small scale thermal and land effects to the GFS forecast.

It uses the highest resolution GFS data we can obtain and other surface datasets for initialisation and boundary conditions. The 1/36° domains are similar in horizontal and vertical resolution to the HRRR.

It is nested inside the GFS. This has two main advantages.

The first is that merging the data inside larger WRF and GFS areas is seamless. Flowx shows this very nicely.

It also increases the skill level of the forecast. We can and have run WRF or MPAS on a global domain, but such a solution will always have a poorer outcome than the originating model so any nested simulation will become increasingly degraded beyond a few hours.

It is aimed at sailing locations where high resolution model data isn't available (eg Cape Town and NZ) or is is harder to obtain.

Various areas are also available on demand for regattas, such as the Americas Cup, Sail GP, the Olympics and Mediterranean sailing venues.

What it isn't

It isn't a replacement for the national mesoscale models such as Access, Arôme, HIRLAM and HRRR.

It also doesn't replace the global models for larger scale areas. 

Data

MSLP, rain, 10m wind and gusts, 20m wind, 2m temperature, CAPE & total cloud cover. Others available on request.

The Expedition interface allows only the wind or basic parameters to be downloaded.

Updated every 6 hours (4x daily), except for NZ where the model is updated every 3 hours for AC36. Update times can be checked in Expedition before downloading.

Resolution

1/12° (0.083°, < 5nm), 1 hour increments to 72 hours

1/36° (0.028°, < 2nm), 30 minute increments to 36 hours

1/108° (0.009°, 1/2nm), 30 minute increments to 24 hours

Minimum of 45 levels. WRF can be run with 35 or fewer levels, but more is always better.

New area

Melbourne 1/108°