The Role of Solar Radiation in Wind Characteristics at Four Sites across the Columbia River Basin As Part of the Wind Forecasting Improvement Project (WFIP-2)

The second Wind Forecast Improvement Project’s (WFIP-2) major goal is to improve wind forecasts in complex terrain for renewable energy applications. This effort involves multiple U.S. agencies, academia, and industry to improve NWP forecasts of low-­level winds within the Columbia River Basin during a 17-month period from February 2016 – April 2017. This presentation explores the role of radiation in wind characteristics in specific meteorological regimes in this region, e.g. gap-flow and cold pool events. The sum of the incoming and outgoing radiative components at the surface is the energy available for boundary layer processes. Statistical correlations will be explored between in-coming and out-going surface shortwave and longwave radiation, shortwave albedo, and cloud amount with wind flow characteristics across 4 sites, Condon, Eugene, Rufus, and Wasco, OR. Changes in these correlations will be investigated diurnally and seasonally and in meteorological regimes and how well they are captured by NOAA’s 3-km High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR), and for an experimental 750-m nest within a development version of the 3-km HRRR. The HRRR has been targeted for specific improvements in model physics such as scale-aware aspects of turbulence parameterizations (PBL + shallow cumulus scheme) and land-surface physics. This analysis will explore the improvements in the model physics on forecasts of surface radiation and 80-m winds.