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Boundary layer schemes in the regional climate model RegCM4.6 over Central Africa

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Abstract

This study examines the performance of two Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) parameterizations in the RegCM4.6 regional climate model for the Central African domain. These are the Holtslag scheme and the University of Washington (UW) scheme. The evaluation is made by performing two experiments over 5 years (from January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2006) with a horizontal resolution of \(0.35^{o}\times 0.35^{o}\). The UW-PBL scheme only takes into account the gradients within adjacent vertical levels in the model whereas the Holtslag PBL scheme takes into account the vertical transport over a deeper layer covering several levels in the model. The analysis extends over December–January–February (DJF), March–April–May (MAM), June–July–August (JJA), and September–October–November (SON). For more specific analysis, the study domain is divided into five zones. The results show that the Holtslag scheme is favorable for simulating rainfall in Central Africa mostly during JJA season in zone 3. As far as the wind is concerned, both schemes have a more or less reasonable approach with the positioning of the jets and the observed monsoon flow but with a slight difference. The patterns show a much greater diversity in the way the turbulent mix is taken into account in PBL. The inclusion of evaporation in our analysis shows that it may be the origin of the absence of water vapor in clouds which considerably reduces the amount of rainfall at the ground surface. Results also show that the simulated total cloud cover can explain the better performance of UW PBL scheme than Holtslag scheme to reproduce surface temperature.

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Acknowledgements

The authors express their sincere thanks to the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Italy, for providing the RegCM-6.1 model. The first author is grateful to the ICTP for the Associate program. A special thanks also goes to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments which improve the initial quality of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UR2MSP, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Dschang, Dschang, Cameroon

    A. J. Komkoua Mbienda & G. M. Guenang

  2. LEMAP, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Yaounde 1, Yaoundé, Cameroon

    A. J. Komkoua Mbienda, G. M. Guenang, S. Kaissassou, A. Tchakoutio Sandjon, R. S. Tanessong, S. L. Matho Lontio & D. A. Vondou

  3. Earth System Physics Section, The Abdus salam ICTP, 34151, Trieste, Italy

    A. J. Komkoua Mbienda

  4. ENSP, University of Yaounde 1, Yaoundé, Cameroon

    S. Kaissassou

  5. Higher Teacher Technical School, University of Buea, Buea, Cameroon

    A. Tchakoutio Sandjon

  6. Faculty of Agronomy and Agricultural Sciences, University of Dschang, Dschang, Cameroon

    R. S. Tanessong

  7. National Institute of Cartography, Yaoundé, Cameroon

    Z. Yepdo Djomou

Authors
  1. A. J. Komkoua Mbienda
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  2. G. M. Guenang
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  3. S. Kaissassou
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  4. A. Tchakoutio Sandjon
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  5. R. S. Tanessong
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  6. S. L. Matho Lontio
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  7. D. A. Vondou
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  8. Z. Yepdo Djomou
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Contributions

Concept, acquisition of data and design: AJKM and GMG drafting of manuscript: SK, SML and AJKM, GMG and DAV also helped to finalize the text for manuscript. Code development: RST, AJKM, ATS and GMG developed the code. DAV and ZYD supervised the code development and did the critical revision of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. J. Komkoua Mbienda.

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Not applicable

Conflicts of interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Availability of data and material

RegCM4 input data are obtained at http://clima-dods.ictp.it/regcm4. Observation data can be downloaded in their respective website.

Code availability

This study used CDO (Climate Data Operators) and NCL (NCAR Command Language) softwares. CDO is a collection of several operators for climate model output processing whereas NCL is an open source interpreted language, designed specifically for scientific data visualization and processing. There are freely available at http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/cdo and http://www.ncl.ucar.edu, respectively.

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Komkoua Mbienda, A.J., Guenang, G.M., Kaissassou, S. et al. Boundary layer schemes in the regional climate model RegCM4.6 over Central Africa. Clim Dyn 58, 691–709 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05928-0

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