Exploring Sensitivities of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Parameters in the Southwestern United States using Numerical Modeling and Observational Data

A field experiment was conducted in March/April 2018 using the US Army Research Laboratory’s Meteorological Sensor Array (MSA) at the US Department of Agriculture’s Jornada Experimental Range near Las Cruces, New Mexico to collect meteorological and acoustic data over complex terrain and multiple land use categories during periods of synoptically forced conditions. While the ultimate purpose of this data collection is to support the development of frameworks for predicting microphone wind noise using numerical weather modeling, two prerequisite uses of this observational data include 1) validation of high-resolution simulations with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) meteorological model over the MSA domain (1-km horizontal grid increments) and 2) exploring the sensitivities of several atmospheric variables within the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) to changes in WRF parameterizations and spatiotemporal parameters. Preliminary results of these validation efforts and sensitivity analyses will be presented along with a description of potential applications of wind noise data toward inferring atmospheric parameters within the ABL.

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