Modifying wrfbdy file for future climate question

[stormchasegenie]

Greetings,

I am running a real case to study a future climate scenario as it compares to a current case. To do this, I modify the wrfinput and wrflow file per the methodology in Keller et al. (2018) in the following ways:

1. Add 2K to all absolute temperatures
2. Adjust QVAPOR such that the RH remains constant.

Everything worked fine for these files. However, when I take a look at the wrfbdy file, the perturbation theta values (T_BXS, T_BXE, T_BYS, & T_BYE) are definitely not potential temperature perturbations; they look like fill values. Their tendencies (T_BTXS, T_BTXE, T_BTYS, & T_BTYE) look reasonable, however. The QVAPOR variables also follow this trend (unphysical absolute values but reasonable tendencies).

I think I can thus leave the wrfbdy file alone for this short future climate experiment. However, I need to be absolutely sure that I've interpreted the meaning of the temperature and vapor variables in the boundary file.

Thoughts?

Many thanks,
-Stefan

Source: "The sensitivity of Alpine summer convection to surrogate climate change: an intercomparison between convective-parameterizing and convective-resolving models" --ACP

 

[Ming Chen]

Stefan,
The variables in wrfbdy are coupled with (mu+mub). That is why they have large values. However, their tendencies are uncoupled and look more reasonable.

 

[stormchasegenie]

Thanks for the reply,

So does wrf.exe make use of T_BXS, T_BXE, T_BYS, & T_BYE?

-Stefan

 

[Ming Chen]

Yes WRF does read those variables saved in wrfbdy. They are values at the outermost boundary grids.

 

[stormchasegenie]

Eggcellent, thanks!