Abstract
Regional-scale atmospheric circulations play a critical role in air pollutants transport. The planetary boundary layer height, in conjunction with other components, is a key factor in atmospheric dispersion. In this study, planetary boundary layer parameters over two coastal locations (Skhira and Marsa-Dhouiba) in Tunisia were simulated using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) v.4.0 dynamical core. Regarding the validation process, the model evaluation demonstrated reasonable agreement with measurements in the study sites and periods. In general, the model slightly overestimates the observed values of near-surface temperature as well as the wind speed in Skhira and slightly underestimates the observed values in Marsa-Dhouiba. For wind direction, however, WRF simulations give opposite results. This preliminary study showed that the model is able to predict the considered meteorological fields in an accurate way with both final analysis (FNL) and Era-Interim boundary datasets. Therefore, the required meteorological fields to initialize an atmospheric dispersion model can be captured reasonably well at regional scale after dynamical downscaling. Integrating our results into project studies aiming at tracing air transports could serve the purpose of reducing environmental pollution over Tunisia.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) for the 4.0 version of WRF model and the FNL dataset that was employed for meteorological simulations. We are grateful also to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) for providing the Era-Interim dataset.
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Snoun, H., Kanfoudi, H., Bellakhal, G. et al. Validation and sensitivity analysis of the WRF mesoscale model PBL schemes over Tunisia using dynamical downscaling approach. Euro-Mediterr J Environ Integr 4, 13 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41207-019-0103-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41207-019-0103-3