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WAM or WW3

Kiwi123's picture
Kiwi123 started the topic in
The Crystal Ball
 Monday, 28 Oct 2013 at 6:19pm

Hey,

Diggin' the new website.

Just one question though, are the forecasts coming from one of the old WAM models, or the new AusWave WW3 model, or the global WW3 model?

Thanks,

Kiwi123's picture
Kiwi123's picture
Kiwi123 Monday, 28 Oct 2013 at 6:22pm

Also, not a question, but just a thought. Could we get it so model forecast images (WAMS) plot the surface winds over land as well (like the slp images), and not cropped to only the ocean extent.

Thanks,

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Monday, 28 Oct 2013 at 7:39pm

The WAMs are from WW3 (we are running our own customised version inhouse). As for winds over land, I personally prefer it the way it is as wind speed over land is often much lighter, due to frictional effects, so it often doesn't show anything of interest.

What does everyone else think?

Kiwi123's picture
Kiwi123's picture
Kiwi123 Monday, 28 Oct 2013 at 7:57pm

Thanks for the reply. Thought it would have been WW3. Any reason why the forecasts are still called WAMs?

Whatever GCM the wind fields are obtained from should include the land surface frictional effect as far as I understand (although only very coarsely depending on model resolution). It also appears that the land is just drawn on top of the gridded wind field data, so it could just be made a user option as to which is displayed on top?

Just out of personal interest, Is there any info available on the in-house WW3 model you use? e.g. Grid size, what GCM winds you use, validation etc? I have been researching wave models recently and find it all very fascinating.

Thanks

thermalben's picture
thermalben's picture
thermalben Monday, 28 Oct 2013 at 8:44pm

Sorry Kiwi, I can't elaborate on our setup to any great degree due to commercial reasons.

As for why we called it WAM - that's just cosmetic, as it's a name that most surfers remember as representing wave models, that's very space efficient too.