Overview of the PALM model system 6.0

In this paper, we describe the PALM model system 6.0. PALM (formerly an abbreviation for Parallelized Large-eddy Simulation Model and now an independent name) is a Fortran-based code and has been applied for studying a variety of atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers for about 20 years. The model is optimized for use on massively parallel computer architectures. This is a follow-up paper to the PALM 4.0 model description in Maronga et al. (2015). During the last years, PALM has been significantly improved and now offers a variety of new components. In particular, much effort was made to enhance the model with components needed for applications in urban environments, like fully interactive land surface and radiation schemes, chemistry, and an indoor model. This paper serves as an overview paper of the PALM 6.0 model system and we describe its current model core. The individual components for urban applications, case studies, validation runs, and issues with suitable input data are presented and discussed in a series of companion papers in this special issue.Peer reviewe

The New European Wind Atlas Model Chain

The New European Wind Atlas (NEWA), the largest European project on wind resource assessment technology, has developed mesoscale-to-microscale wind atlas and site assessment methodologies alongside a validation strategy that leverages data from large field experiments as well as wind resource campaigns from industry through a formal verification and validation process. A probabilistic wind atlas approach, based on a multi-physics ensemble, provides means to quantify the uncertainty associated to the mesoscale configuration. Offline meso-micro coupling has been adopted to provide a modular approach for microscale models of different fidelities to share common mesoscale input data. An opensource model chain based on WRF and OpenFOAM codes has been released as reference for future model development and validation activities in connection to wind assessment best practices and standards

Micro-scale model comparison (benchmark) at the moderately complex forested site Ryningsnäs

This article describes a study in which modellers were challenged to compute the wind field at a forested site with moderately complex topography. The task was to model the wind field in stationary conditions with neutral stratification by using the wind velocity measured at 100 m at a metmast as the only reference. Detailed maps of terrain elevation and forest densities were provided as the only inputs, derived from airborne laser scans (ALSs) with a resolution of 10 m x 10 m covering an area of 50 km x 50 km, that closely match the actual forest and elevation of the site. The participants were free to apply their best practices for the simulation to decide the size of the domain, the value of the geostrophic wind, and every other modelling parameter. The comparison of the results with the measurements is shown for the vertical profiles of wind speed, shear, wind direction, and turbulent kinetic energy. The ALS-based data resulted in reasonable agreement of the wind profile and turbulence magnitude. The best performance was found to be that of large-eddy simulations using a very large domain. For the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes type of models, the constants in the turbulence closure were shown to have a great influence on the yielded turbulence level, but were of much less importance for the wind speed profile. Of the variety of closure constants used by the participating modellers, the closure constants from Sogachev and Panferov (2006) proved to agree best with the measurements. Particularly the use of C-mu approximate to 0.03 in the k-epsilon model obtained better agreement with turbulence level measurements. All except two participating models used the full detailed ground and forest information to model the forest, which is considered significant progress compared to previous conventional approaches. Overall, the article gives an overview of how well different types of models are able to capture the flow physics at a moderately complex forested site