The Sensitivity Analyses of Initial Condition and Data Assimilation for a Fog Event using the Mesoscale Meteorological Model

The accurate simulation of micro-scale weather phenomena such as fog using the mesoscale meteorological models is a very complex task. Especially, the uncertainty arisen from initial input data of the numerical models has a decisive effect on the accuracy of numerical models. The data assimilation is required to reduce the uncertainty of initial input data. In this study, the limitation of the mesoscale meteorological model was verified by WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model for a summer fog event around the Nakdong river in Korea. The sensitivity analyses of simulation accuracy from the numerical model were conducted using two different initial and boundary conditions: KLAPS (Korea Local Analysis and Prediction System) and LDAPS (Local Data Assimilation and Prediction System) data. In addition, the improvement of numerical model performance by FDDA (Four-Dimensional Data Assimilation) using the observational data from AWS (Automatic Weather System) was investigated. The result of sensitivity analysis showed that the accuracy of simulated air temperature, dew point temperature, and relative humidity with LDAPS data was higher than those of KLAPS, but the accuracy of the wind speed of LDAPS was lower than that of KLAPS. Significant difference was found in case of relative humidity where RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) for LDAPS and KLAPS was 15.7 and 35.6%, respectively. The RMSE for air temperature, wind speed, and relative humidity was improved by approximately 0.3 degrees C, 0.2 ms(-1) and 2.2%, respectively after incorporating the FDDA.