Hosted by: Yangang Liu

The WRF-Solar model is an augmentation of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model specifically designed for solar energy applications. The developments have focused on improving the representation of the aerosol-cloud-radiation physics. In this direction, WRF-Solar includes a fast radiative transfer parameterization to provide surface irradiance forecast only limited by the model time step; an improved representation of the aerosol-radiation feedback (aerosol direct effect); incorporation of the cloud-aerosol feedbacks (aerosol indirect effects); and improved cloud-radiation feedbacks. During this seminar I will provide an overview of the WRF-Solar model and present evaluations that illustrate the benefits of the augmentations. Ongoing developments including a better cloud initialization and extending the model to provide probabilistic forecasts will be also discussed.