Verification and Inter-comparison of Mesoscale Models in the Coastal Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer

Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models forecast atmospheric conditions by modeling physical interactions in the environment. In near-coastal regions, it is imperative that the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps understand and predict atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) interactions for planning and operations. A recently completed investigation sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) seeks to better understand the model performance and representation of physical processes in the ABL. This research includes comparison of the U.S. Navy's Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Prediction System (COAMPS^®1) which uses a Level 2.5 Mellor Yamada-based ABL scheme and the Unified Model (UM) of the U.K. Met Office (UKMO) which uses the Lock ABL scheme. To evaluate model performance, we used observation data from a field campaign of the Coastal Land-Air-Sea Interaction (CLASI) ONR Departmental Research Initiative. The observation set is principally gathered from buoys in the northern Monterey Bay in late summer 2022. Through verification and model inter-comparison, we quantified model performance in forecasting various ABL fields, as well as differences and trends in model representation of the ABL.