Evaluation of the Coupled WRF-Lake Model over the Great Lakes

A five-year simulation was performed using the advanced Research Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model version 3.2 coupled with a one-dimensional thermal diffusion lake scheme that has been enhanced with improved turbulent diffusion coefficients. In this study, the coupled WRF-Lake model is evaluated over the Great Lakes. The simulated monthly lake surface temperature (LST) and lake ice cover (LIC) during the winter months (December, January, and February) over the period of 2003 - 2007 are compared with MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) satellite data and output produced from WRF without a lake scheme. The results show that the coupled model is able to realistically simulate LST and LIC, and the spatial correlation coefficients between the WRF-Lake output and MODIS data are above 0.56 for the Great Lakes. The simulated biases from WRF-Lake for LST and LIC are significantly reduced as compared to those from WRF without a lake scheme. WRF-Lake also realistically reproduces the observed precipitation over the areas strongly affected by lake processes. The above results indicate that the coupled WRF-Lake model is very important to accurate predictions of weather and climate over lake-affected regions