Investigation of air-sea interaction with a One-Way Coupling between a Spectral Wave Model and WRF-LES

The study aims to couple the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) [1] model of the large eddy simulation (LES) module with the MIKE 21 wave [2] model to study the effect of surface waves on the atmospheric flow over the North Sea. We provide a realistic surface wave field with MIKE 21 by forcing Era5 wind speed. We examine the effect of such wave fields on the atmosphere for a variety of met-ocean conditions, from normal to extreme conditions. The methodology involves applying simulated significant wave heights as the surface boundary for the WRF model, employing the LES module to capture the three-dimensional as well as smaller scales of turbulence that are unresolved by WRF-LES. The simulations will be validated using atmospheric and wave measurements in the North Sea, e.g., from the FINO 1 and 3 metocean research platforms. The preliminary results include the model outputs, including the spatial distribution of wind fields under different wave conditions. [1] Skamarock, W. C., Klemp, J. B., Dudhia, J., Gill, D. O., Liu, Z., Berner, J., … Huang, X. -yu. (2019). A Description of the Advanced Research WRF Model Version 4.1 (No. NCAR/TN-556+STR). [2] https://www.mikepoweredbydhi.com/