Atmospheric regional climate simulations over Greenland with the Polar MM5

A modified version of the PSU/NCAR MM5 model, referred to as the Polar MM5, has been used to simulate the atmospheric state over the Greenland ice sheet for a 12 month period (April 1997 - March 1998). Simulations with durations of 48 h, one month, and one year have been completed using the Polar MM5. In addition, both hydrostatic and nonhydrostatic dynamics have been employed in the simulations.

The simulated near-surface atmospheric state for all of the numerical experiments has been compared to observations from the Greenland Climate Network (GC-NET) automatic weather station (AWS) array. The model exhibits a high degree of skill in simulating the atmospheric evolution on time scales from diurnal through seasonal. The results from the different numerical experiments will be compared, and a discussion of model integration strategies for regional climate simulations will be presented.