Evaluation of several different planetary boundary layer schemes within a single model, a unified model and a multimodel superensemble

Abstract

This paper addresses the forecasts of latent heat fluxes from five different formulations of the planetary boundary layer (PBL). Different formulations are deployed within the Florida State University global spectral model. Hundreds of short range forecast experiments are carried out using daily data sets for summer 2002 with each model. The primary goal of this study is to compare the performance of the diverse family of PBL algorithms for the latent heat fluxes within the PBL. Benchmark fluxes are calculated from the vertical integrals of Yanai's formulation of the apparent moisture sink and a precipitation using Physical Initialization. This provides indirectly observed estimates of the vertical fluxes of latent heat in the PBL. This comparison reveals that no single scheme shows a global spread of improvement over other models for forecasts of latent heat fluxes in the PBL. Among these diverse models the turbulent kinetic energy based closure provides somewhat better results. The construction of a multimodel superensemble provides a synthesis of these different PBL formulations and shows improved forecasts of the surface fluxes. A single unified model utilizing weighted PBL algorithms where all the five schemes are retained within a single model shows some promise for improving a single model. © 2007 The Authors Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Munksgaard.