DE-13-C005 -- Evaluation of A Climate Modeling Procedure Against Observed Meterological Data PDF

Advanced weather forecasting models such as the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) are capable of integrating meteorological data from a large number of observational sources (surface and upper air stations, radar, satellite and modelling data) in order to provide high-resolution climate data for a location where observational data is not available. There are many applications for such climate data within the architectural and HVAC engineering community, however due to a lack of exposure and understanding of the complex models, this data is rarely applied. This paper presents the results of a WRF model representing the Northeastern United States and Canada at 4km resolution evaluated against 2008 historical climate observational data for selected locations. Statistical analysis has been performed on objectively observed bias, and geographical location of bias among other parameters. A comparison of modelled and observed data shows that the WRF model correlates very well with observed data over several important climatic parameters (e.g., temperature, wind speed and direction, humidity) at most of the meteorological stations across the modelling domain.