High resolution WRF simulation of Hurricane Florence (2018) and Harvey (2017) during Landfall

A high-resolution simulation of Hurricane Florence (2018) and Harvey (2017) is performed using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model version 3.9.1.1. The WRF model was configured by three (two-way) nested domains with a horizontal grid spacing of 12, 4, and 1.33 km, respectively, and 42 vertical levels. The physics options used are Dudhia shortwave radiation model and Rapid Radiative Transfer Model for longwave, Noah as the land surface model, and boundary layer processes parameterized following Mellor–Yamada–Janjic Scheme. The microphysics and cumulus parameterization (for the outermost domain) are single moment 6-class scheme and the Grell-3D, respectively. The simulations are performed considering: i) a control experiment with the default Noah LSM (UCM); and ii) another considering multilayer BEP urban physics (BEP).

The data herein presents the model initialization at 00 UTC 13 Sep 2018 for Hurricane Florence (2018) and 00 UTC 25 Aug 2017 for Hurricane Harvey (2017) with an output of 3-hour for domain one and 1-hour for domain 3. The format is NetCDF containing detailed metadata. Three-dimensional meteorological field variables include three wind components, potential temperature, water vapor mixing ratio, and atmospheric pressure. Two-dimensional variables include horizontal wind components at 10 m AGL, potential temperature and water vapor mixing ratio at 2 m AGL, atmospheric pressure at the surface, terrain height, planetary boundary layer height, rainfall, land use/ land cover, latent and sensible heat flux, and the Coriolis sine latitude term. The outputs are provided for UCM and BEP simulations of Hurricane Florence and Harvey.