MM5V3 WIDEALGRID package for Idealized Simulations

Introduction

MM5 is a popular, modern Limited Area Atmospheric Model maintained by National Center for Atmospheric Research, CO, USA. This model is geared towards operational and research simulations of actual atmosphere. Sometimes it is useful to have the ability to define hypothetical conditions under which the model should operate. However, this is not a standard feature of the model. There are several solutions for this problem, proposed by various people. I have been using th e Idealgrid package during 2002. Later, I needed to add moisture fields to the idealized conditions, which was not possible to do with the original Idealgrid. Therefore I hacked Idealgrid, added a new landform and landuse generation module (it was not available in Idealgrid), renamed as widealgrid (wet-idealgrid) and used for my research work during 2004-2006.

Important Note

(16:28, 13 April 2006 (JST)) The offspring of MM5, the WRF model has a standard idealized simulation component [[1]. Therefore, it is advisable to check the abilities of WRF ideal module before plunging into widealgrid package, unless there is an absolute need to use MM5 for ideal simulations.

Package

Download the package from here. (You need bzip2 to expand it). Expand and then untar the file.

bunzip2 Widealgrid.tar.bz 
tar -xvf Widealgrid.tar.bz

You get two files:
terrainMake.tar & widealgrid.tar

terrainMake

Untar the file,

tar -xvf terrainMake.tar

then read the README file inside. The package is written in Java Language, so you need a java compiler (a standard component of Linux thesedays)

to run it.

widealgrid

Untar at the target regridder directory.

cd ./REGRID/regridder 
tar -xvf widealgrid.tar

widealgrid folder with a number of files and a a new namelist.input file (meaning it will replace your original namelist.input in ./REGRID/regridder !).

Enjoy!

You may want to read our recent paper. (This is the standard reference for widealgrid widealgrid).

 

References

A. Pathirana, S. Herath and T. Yamada, Simulating orographic rainfall with a limited-area, non-hydrostatic atmospheric model under idealized forcing,  Atmos. Chem. Phys., 5, 215-226, 2005