RE: Writing time averaged atmospheric variables in WRFOUT Files

Hi,

I am using WRF for the purpose of high-resolution mesoscale wind resource mapping for a small island state in the tropics.

I wanted to know whether it is possible for WRF to average simulated atmospheric variables over a period of 10 minutes or 60 minutes and then write the averaged values to the WRF Files rather than writing instantaneous values every hour??

I seek this information for validation purposes since ground-based wind data measurements are 10-minute or 60-minute averages.

Is there a particular settings option in &time_control in WRF??

Appreciate your assistance and advice.

Regards
Kunal

Hi,

I have identified a setting option in &time_control for averaging:
"
output_diagnostics = 1
auxhist3_outname = "wrfxtrm_d<domain>_<date>"
auxhist3_interval = 10, 10, 10,
frames_per_auxhist3 = 1000, 1000,
io_form_auxhist3 = 2
history_interval = 60, 60, 60
"
Is this the correct option for averaging atmospheric variables over a 10 minute period and writing to WRF file every 60 minutes??

Appreciate your assistance and advice.

Regards
Kunal

Yes I believe this is a correct setting. Note that with output_diagnostics=1, WRF will output 36 surface diagnostic arrays listed below:
t2min,t2max,tt2min,tt2max,t2mean,t2std,q2min,q2max,tq2min,tq2max,q2mean,q2std,skintempmin,skintempmax,tskintempmin,tskintempmax,skintempmean,skintempstd,u10max,v10max,spduv10max,tspduv10max,u10mean,v10mean,spduv10mean,u10std,v10std,spduv10std,raincvmax,rainncvmax,traincvmax,trainncvmax,raincvmean,rainncvmean,raincvstd,rainncvstd

Thank you for confirming.

Is it possible to amend the setting so that it just averages wind speed and wind direction for 10 minutes and writes to WRF files every 60 minutes?

Also, when you say that WRF will output 36 surface diagnostic arrays...will these be separate files or written to the same WRF out file?

Appreciate your assistance and advice.

Regards
Kunal

Kunal,
All the 36 variables will be saved in the same output file.
If you only want wind speed and wind direction, you need to modify the codes to exclude other variable.
Please look at the relevant codes phys/module_diag_cl.F and phys/module_diagnostics_driver.F

Thank you for the information.

The simulation was successful, but the values written to the WRFOUT_d03 file is the same as the instantaneous values for "history interval = 60" for earlier simulations without averaging.

There are also wrfxtrm_d03 files created which I suppose have the 10 minutes average values. I was expecting WRF to average the values every 10 minutes and write them to the WRFOUT_D03 files every 60 minutes as my ground-based wind measurements are hourly records of 10-minute averages.

How can I extract the average atmospheric parameters from the wrfxtrm_do3 files? Any sample scripts?

And is there any other way to average atmospheric variables every 10 minutes and write them to WRFOUT files every hour?

Appreciate your assistance and advise.

Regards
Kunal

The 10-minute average variables are saved in wrfxtm files, wrfout still contains only instantaneous values of the variables. You should be able to read the variables from wrfxtm, and average to get hourly mean values. Some post process packages like NCL, ARWpost, RIP can be easily applied to read data, and you can create a piece of code to do averaging.
The answer is no to your question of writing time-averaged data to wrfout. WRF cannot do that.

I take note and thank you for the information.

Regards
Kunal