High resolution modelling of weather over the Grand Banks

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Wood Environment and Infrastructure Solutions provide detailed weather forecasts for oil & gas industry operations offshore from Newfoundland. Among the challenges are high winds, rough seas and fog. These impact the safe operation of these facilities, and the transportation of equipment and personnel. Most of our activity will center on evaluation and improving the application of WRF (the Weather Research and Forecasting model developed at NCAR) to weather forecasting in the Grand Banks area. Output from the model can provide input to a wave model (WW3) and couplings with ocean and wave models will be explored. The goal is to improve the forecasts of adverse weather, including high winds and fog, plus wave conditions so that operations on and around offshore installations can be conducted safely and efficiently. The potential impacts of fog at offshore sites preventing helicopter landings is a specific issue where better forecasting can avoid "boomerang flights". Important factors will involve determining which data to assimilate when the models are run operationally. This may include information from GOES-E and other satellites as well as in-situ measurements made on the offshore facilities or from ships in the area.The Grand Banks is among the foggiest places in the world with fog occurring up to 50% of the time in the summer months. The condensation of water vapour into droplets and the creation of fog or low cloud in the Earth's atmospheric boundary layer involves a complex balance between turbulent mixing of heat and water vapour, cloud micro-physical processes and radiative transfers of heat. Improving our quantitative understanding of the conditions leading to the occurrence, intensity, depth and persistence of these marine fog events is a secondary focus of the study. Coupled closely with these activities we will be seeking ways to refine the treatment of fog in WRF and other weather forecast models, applying the WRF model, in both Single Column and operational 3-D modes and evaluating the performance in this region, for fog, high winds and, using WW3, for sea state.