Development of WACCM With the Non-Hydrostatic MPAS-A Dynamical Core

The non-hydrostatic Model for Prediction Across Scales-Atmosphere (MPAS-A) dynamical core has recently been adapted for the Specified Chemistry Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (SC-WACCM). In this study, the mean zonal wind and temperature climatology from SC-WACCM/MPAS-A is compared with the results from SC-WACCM using the finite volume and spectral element dynamical cores, as well as the zonal wind and temperature climatology of Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite mission and SABER. The simulations have been performed at horizontal resolutions of similar to 100 km. Generally a good agreement is seen between the results from the three dynamical cores, which verifies that the new dynamical core is working with WACCM. Development of whole atmosphere models are focusing increasingly more on geospace applications. This focus stems from our society becoming dependent on advanced technology which can be vulnerable to space weather. In these regions the accuracy of the hydrostatic approximation becomes problematic. In this work the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model at the National Center for Atmospheric Research is developed and tested with the non-hydrostatic Model for Prediction Across Scales-Atmosphere dynamical core. Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) with the non-hydrostatic Model for Prediction Across Scales-Atmosphere (MPAS-A) dynamical core has been developed Temperature and wind climatology from WACCM/MPAS-A is compared with results from the spectral element (SE) and finite volume (FV) dynamical cores, as well as available observations Preliminary validation demonstrates agreement with the result from the SE and FV dynamical cores