Jaymes S. Kenyon authored and/or contributed to the following articles/publications.
Improving Wind Energy Forecasting through Numerical Weather Prediction Model Development
The primary goal of the Second Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP2) is to advance the state-of-the-art of wind energy forecasting in complex terrain. To achieve this goal, a comprehensive 18-month field measurement campaign was conducted in the region of the Columbia River basin. The observations were used to diagnose and quantify systemati...
Institutions National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory - ESRL National Center for Atmospheric Research - NCAR
A Description of the MYNN-EDMF Scheme and the Coupling to Other Components in WRF–ARW
The Mellor–Yamada–Nakanishi–Niino (MYNN) (Nakanishi and Niino 2001, 2004, 2006, and 2009) scheme was first integrated into the Advanced Research version of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF-ARW) version 3.1 (Skamarock et al. 2008) by Mariusz Pagowski of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Global Systems Divis...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
Representing shallow cumulus in numerical weather prediction and climate models is a significant challenge. Misrepresenting these subgrid-scale clouds can result in large errors in the downwelling shortwave radiative flux at surface, resulting in large errors in the surface temperature that results in feedbacks into the accuracy of the thermodyn...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
Addressing Common Cloud - Radiation Errors from ~4-hour to 4-week Model Prediction
Cloud-radiation representation in models for subgrid-scale clouds is a known gap from subseasonal-to-seasonal models down to storm-scale models applied for forecast duration of only a few hours. NOAA/ESRL has been applying common physical parameterizations for scale-aware deep/shallow convection and boundary-layer mixing over this wide range of ...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
The second Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP2) is a multiagency field campaign held in the Columbia Gorge area (October 2015–March 2017). The main goal of the project is to understand and improve the forecast skill of numerical weather prediction (NWP) models in complex terrain, particularly beneficial for the wind energy industry. This re...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
The wind-energy (WE) industry relies on numerical weather prediction (NWP) forecast models as foundational or base models for many purposes, including wind-resource assessment and wind-power forecasting. During the Second Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP2) in the Columbia River Basin of Oregon and Washington, a significant effort was made...
Institutions Earth System Research Laboratory - ESRL National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
Ground-based Doppler-lidar instrumentation provides atmospheric wind data at dramatically improved accuracies and spatial/temporal resolutions. These capabilities have provided new insights into atmospheric flow phenomena, but they also should have a strong role in NWP model improvement. Insight into the nature of model errors can be gained by s...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
A new hybrid, sigma-pressure vertical coordinate was recently added to the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model in an effort to reduce numerical noise in the model equations near complex terrain. Testing of this hybrid, terrain-following coordinate was undertaken in the WRF-based Rapid Refresh (RAP) and High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRR...
A Description of the MYNN Surface-Layer Scheme
The surface-layer scheme controls the degree of coupling between the model surface and the atmosphere. Traditionally, surface-layer schemes have been developed to be paired with certain planetary boundary layer (PBL) schemes, but this singular pairing is too narrow in scope for modern physics suites, since the surfac...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
The Motion of Mesoscale Snowbands in Northeast U.S. Winter Storms
The spatial distribution of snowfall accumulation accompanying winter storms is a product of both snowfall rate and duration. Winter storms are commonly associated with mesoscale snowbands that can strongly modulate snowfall accumulation. Although the development of mesoscale snowbands can usually be anticipated, snowband residence time at a fix...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
During the second Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP2; Oct 2015–Mar 2017, Columbia River Gorge and Basin area) several improvements to the parameterizations applied in the High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR – 3?km horizontal grid spacing) and the High Resolution Rapid Refresh Nest (HRRRNEST – 750?m horizontal grid spacing) Numerical Weathe...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
Annually and seasonally averaged wind profiles from three Doppler lidars were obtained from sites in the Columbia River Basin of east-central Oregon and Washington, a major region of wind-energy production, for the WFIP2 experiment. The profile data are used to quantify the spatial variability of wind flows in this area of complex-terrain, to as...
Institutions Earth System Research Laboratory - ESRL National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
Shallow Cumulus in WRF Parameterizations Evaluated against LASSO Large-Eddy Simulations
Representation of shallow cumulus is a challenge for mesoscale numerical weather prediction models. These cloud fields have important effects on temperature, solar irradiance, convective initiation, and pollutant transport, among other processes. Recent improvements to physics schemes available in the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model...
Institutions Earth System Research Laboratory - ESRL National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
Diagnostic fields developed for hourly updated NOAA weather models
This document describes methods for diagnosing non-prognostic variables from explicit prognostic variables from hourly updated NOAA models. Many of these diagnostics have been developed for specific forecast applications for downstream forecast users over the years; these variables have been output from the Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) model prior t...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
Complex-terrain locations often have repeatable near-surface wind patterns, such as synoptic gap flows and local thermally forced flows. An example is the Columbia River Valley in east-central Oregon-Washington, a significant wind-energy-generation region and the site of the Second Wind-Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP2). Data from three Doppl...
Institutions Earth System Research Laboratory - ESRL National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
A North American Hourly Assimilation and Model Forecast Cycle: The Rapid Refresh
The Rapid Refresh (RAP), an hourly-updated assimilation and model forecast system, replaced the Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) as an operational regional analysis and forecast system among the suite of models at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) in 2012. The need for an effective hourly-updated assimilation and modeling sys...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
The second Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP2) is an 18-month field campaign in the Pacific Northwest U.S.A., whose goal is to improve the accuracy of numerical-weather-prediction forecasts in complex terrain. The WFIP2 campaign involved the deployment of a large suite of in situ and remote sensing instrumentation, including eight 915-MHz ...
Institutions Earth System Research Laboratory - ESRL National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
Because of limitations of variational and ensemble data assimilation schemes, resulting analysis fields exhibit some noise from imbalance in subsequent model forecasts. Controlling finescale noise is desirable in the NOAA’s Rapid Refresh (RAP) assimilation/forecast system, which uses an hourly data assimilation cycle. Hence, a digital filter ini...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
The land surface model (LSM) described in this manuscript was originally developed as part of the NOAA Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) model development effort; with ongoing modifications, it is now used as an option for the WRF community model. The RUC model and its WRF-based NOAA successor, the Rapid Refresh (RAP), are hourly updated and have an emph...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
Progress Toward Improved Solar Forecasts in Hourly Updated RAP and HRRR Forecasts
The High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) 3km hourly updated model is now being run operationally at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). A focus on improved cloud/solar forecasts has been central to development of HRRRv2 and HRRRv3 experimental versions, along with the parent 13km Rapid Refresh (RAP). Experimental, advanc...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
An operational upgrade of the RAP and HRRR model systems at NCEP is planned for August 2016. This coordinated upgrade (RAP version 3 and HRRR version 2, RAPv3/HRRRv2) includes many enhancements to the data assimilation, model, and post-processing formulations that result in significant improvements to nearly all forecast aspects, including uppe...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
The High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) is a convection-allowing implementation of the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF-ARW) with hourly data assimilation that covers the conterminous United States and Alaska and runs in real time at the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction. Implemented operationally at NOAA/NCEP in 201...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
The High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) is a convection-allowing implementation of the Advanced Weather Research and Forecast model (WRF-ARW) that covers the conterminous United States and Alaska and runs hourly (for CONUS; every three hours for Alaska) in real time at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction. The high-resolution forec...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
Model Evaluation by Measurements from Collocated Remote Sensors in Complex Terrain
Model improvement efforts involve an evaluation of changes in model skill in response to changes in model physics and parameterization. When using wind measurements from various remote sensors to determine model forecast accuracy, it is important to understand the effects of measurement-uncertainty differences among the sensors resulting from di...
Institutions Earth System Research Laboratory - ESRL National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
The accurate forecast of persistent orographic cold-air pools in numerical weather prediction models is essential for the optimal integration of wind energy into the electrical grid during these events. Model development efforts during the Second Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP2) aimed to address the challenges also related to this. We e...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA
Doppler-lidar wind-profile measurements at three sites were used to evaluate NWP model errors from two versions of NOAA’s 3-km-grid HRRR model, to see whether updates in the latest version 4 reduced errors when compared against the original version 1. Nested (750-m grid) versions of each were also tested to see how grid spacing affected forecast...
Institution National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - NOAA