On use of hydrostatic approximation over Greenland

The modern numerical weather prediction and regional climate simulation models frequently use hydrostatic approximation in the basic primitive equations. However on increasing horizontal and vertical resolution of the simulations, the validity of this approximation is questionable. In these numerical investigations, the impact of hydrostatic approximation in the mesoscale regime in a domain over Greenland focusing on the interaction with orographic forcing is investigated. The resultant changes in precipitation pattern over Greenland are assessed in a case study in response to increasing resolution. The impact of the choice of vertical coordinate is also considered.