Multidecadal simulation of coastal fog with a regional climate model

• Published in: Climate dynamics 2013-06, Vol.40 (11-12), p.2801-2812
• Main Authors: O’Brien, Travis A., Sloan, Lisa C., Chuang, Patrick Y., Faloona, Ian C., Johnstone, James A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Airports; Atmospheric boundary layer; Boundary layers; Climate; Climate models; Climatology; Clouds; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Earth, ocean, space; Exact sciences and technology; External geophysics; Fog; Geophysics/Geodesy; Marine; Meteorology; Oceanography; Simulation; Water in the atmosphere (humidity, clouds, evaporation, precipitation)
• ISSN: 0930-7575; 1432-0894
• DOI: 10.1007/s00382-012-1486-x

In order to model stratocumulus clouds and coastal fog, we have coupled the University of Washington boundary layer model to the regional climate model, RegCM (RegCM-UW). By comparing fog occurrences observed at various coastal airports in the western United States, we show that RegCM-UW has success at modeling the spatial and temporal (diurnal, seasonal, and interannual) climatology of northern California coastal fog. The quality of the modeled fog estimate depends on whether coast-adjacent ocean or land grid cells are used; for the model runs shown here, the oceanic grid cells seem to be most appropriate. The interannual variability of oceanic northern California summertime fog, from a multi-decadal simulation, has a high and statistically significant correlation with the observed interannual variability ( r  = 0.72), which indicates that RegCM-UW is capable of investigating the response of fog to long-term climatological forcing. While RegCM-UW has a number of aspects that would benefit from further investigation and development, RegCM-UW is a new tool for investigating the climatology of coastal fog and the physical processes that govern it. We expect that with appropriate physical parameterizations and moderate horizontal resolution, other climate models should be capable of simulating coastal fog. The source code for RegCM-UW is publicly available, under the GNU license, through the International Centre for Theoretical Physics.