Issue running WRF with no snow cover

[mlwasserstein]

Hello WRF modeling community:

I am attempting to run WRF with no snow cover for a certain part of my domain (not the case in the real world for the event I'm simulating, but this is a sensitivity study). I modified the SNOWC variable in my wrfinput* files, so that it looked as I wanted (red indicates snow cover and SNOWC = 1 and blue indicates SNOWC = 0):



In my very first wrfout file for the simulation, this also looks correct:



However, in my next wrfout file for the next time, the SNOWC variable then looks like how it did before I modified my wrfinput file.



Any idea as to why this may be?

If it helps, I've attached my namelist.input and namelist.wps files.

 

[mlwasserstein]

Responding as I've figured out this issue and maybe this will help others. There are 3 variables that need to be changed in the wrfinput* files in order to run with a modified "no snow cover". The following variables should be set to zero for the locations you want to run with no snow cover:

1. SNOWC - Flag indicating snow coverage
2. SNOWH - Physical snow depth
3. SNOW - Snow water equivalent

If you only change SNOWC, the resulting simulation will resort back to the original snow cover. And if you change one of SNOWH or SNOW, the simulation will crash.

 

[Ming Chen]

Thanks for the update, --- you are absolutely right that all the 3 variables should be modified.