Evaluation of land-atmosphere processes of the Polar WRF in the summertime Arctic tundra

<p>Arctic tundra is changing rapidly under the influence of global warming and it is important to know its impact on local and regional climate. Polar Weather Research and Forecasting (PWRF) model is a regional climate model optimized for the polar region and it is a useful tool for studying the Arctic tundra in high resolution. In this study, we evaluate the performance of the PWRF model over the Arctic tundra on clear summer days, when the transition is taking place the most, based on the surface energy fluxes and PBL observations in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada.</p><p>The PWRF simulates a drier and warmer environment in PBL than the observations. Our analysis shows that it is due to the surface energy imbalance in the model caused by the uncertainties in prescribed initial input data and physical parameters rather than structural flaws in the model physics. The performance of the PWRF model over the Arctic tundra is improved when those values are modified based on the observation data.</p>