MESOSCALE MODELING - IMPORTANT CONCEPTS AND QUESTIONS

1. What is a prognostic equation? Give an example.
2. What is a parametization scheme?
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of limited area models?
4. If the important weather phenomena that you want to resolve has a horizontal scale of 20 km, what is the maximum horizontal grid resolution that you can use?
5. What is a common vertical coordinate that is used in mesoscale modeling? What is used in WRF?
6. Why is using z or p a bad coordinate for a mesoscale model?
7. What does it mean when a model is "non hydrostatic"?
8. Give examples of three processes that must be parameterized in any mesoscale model.
9. How are the boundary conditions determined for a limited area mesoscale model?
10. What is the difference between "warm" and "cold" starts? What is meant by the "spin up time"?