A prototype windflow modeling system for tactical weather support operations

John M. Lanicci

This report documents the culmination of a three-year development and testing effort on a two-dimensional (x-y plane) surface-layer windflow model for complex terrain. The model was acquired from the U.S. Army Atmospheric Sciences Laboratory (ASL) at White Sands, New Mexico in 1984. The version of the model described in this report has been adapted to run using real time data on both the Zenith-100 and IBM-compatible Zenith-248 computers. The model accepts input of a single surface observation (or forecast) of wind, temperature, and cloud cover, and uses this information along with terrain information and the date/time to diagnose the surface-layer stability. The model then performs a variational analysis of the windfield, adjusting the winds through a relaxation technique until the windfield conforms to effects of topography, stability, ambient flow conditions, and mass continuity....