Hello, A new project on the LCRC cluster has been requested. Please forward the information on to the LCRC Allocation sub-committee. Applicant's name: Robert Jacob Applicant's institution: ANL Applicant's division: MCS Project Name: Urban_Climate Project title: Urban Regional Climate Modeling Associated funding: LDRD Other Systems: Science: We will be using a weather-scale model with atmospheric chemistry to understand the interaction between cities and their regional climate. Urban areas change their own climate most famously by creating an urban heat island (UHI) and by introducing mechanical drag on air flow and moisture transport within the city. They also emit pollutants that have strong negative local effects. But these effects are not confined to the cities themselves. Pollution plumes can contribute to pollution levels hundreds of miles from a city and add to the hemispheric background pollution. Cities can modify storm systems by “splitting” storms as they approach or creating convection through the UHI or directing wind vertically due to the buildings in them. The extent of the impact of urban areas on the mesoscale and regional climate depends on the advection of heat and pollutants outside the city limits and the changes introduced by the UHI on the large-scale we ather/climate patterns. Thus, there is a need to quantify and model both the urban heat island and its diurnal, seasonal and annual cycles and the flow, especially the vertical transport, of air through, over and around a city. Project description: We'll be using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) with options for an urban surface and atmospheric chemistry. The WRF dynamical core is based on an Eulerian solver for the fully compressible nonhydrostatic equations, cast in flux (conservative) form, using a mass (hydrostatic pressure) vertical coordinate. Prognostic variables for this solver are column mass of dry air (mu), velocities u, v and w (vertical velocity), potential temperature, and geopotential. Non-conserved variables (e.g. temperature, pressure, density) are diagnosed from the conserved prognostic variables. The solver uses a third-order Runge-Kutta time-integration scheme coupled with a split-explicit 2nd-order time integration scheme for the acoustic and gravity-wave modes. 5th-order upwind-biased advection operators are used in the fully conservative flux divergence integration; 2nd-6th order schemes are run-time selectable. WRF-Chem is the WRF model coupled with Chemistry. The model simulates the emission, transport, mixing, and chemical transformation of trace gases and aerosols simultaneously with the meteorology. The model is used for investigation of regional-scale air quality, field program analysis, and cloud-scale interactions between clouds and chemistry. The WRF-Urban modeling system includes three urban parameterization schemes ranging from a simple bulk model to a sophisticated multi-layer urban canopy model. We expect to use 128 nodes and are requesting time in FY14 to do timing and scaling tests for a more full FY15 proposal. Project URL: Requested allocation: 30000 Q1: 0 Q2: 0 Q3: 0 Q4: 30000 Justification: The requester has used undetermined amount hours of their initial startup project. In addition to approving an initial amount, please specify a Category and Subcategory for this project. For a list of the current selection of approved categories, please see: https://wiki.lcrc.anl.gov/wiki/Processes/Categories Once the Allocation committee has approved the project, please go to the Project Management page to create it: https://accounts.lcrc.anl.gov/projects.php Thank You, The LCRC Accounts System