How to get latent heating of all different precipitating mechanisms (evaporation, sublimation, melting, freezing, etc.) and, conversion rates?

[SumitKC]

Hello everyone,

I am Sumit. I made some bulk and bin microphysics simulations of precipitating systems. I am trying to see the latent heating of all different precipitating mechanisms (evaporation, sublimation, melting, freezing, etc.) and, correspondingly, their conversion rates. Is it possible to get these variables directly from the WRF simulation, or do we have to use external sources?

 

[Ming Chen]

WRF doesn't output these variables and one needs to either diagnose them in postrocess package or modify WRF codes to output them.

 

[Devonlarratt]

You can’t get the latent heating from each process (evaporation, sublimation, freezing, melting, etc.) directly as an output in WRF. The model doesn’t save those variables by default. What most people do is either:

1. Modify the microphysics code inside WRF to write out those heating terms for each process, or
2. Use post-processing tools (like wrf-python, NCL, or your own scripts) to calculate the heating rates from the mixing ratio tendencies and then apply the right latent heat values.

So yes, it’s possible, but it takes a little extra work