LAUSR

The influence of grid spacing on daytime planetary boundary layer (PBL) depths is investigated using 2 years of hourly output from a weather forecast system run operationally for an area of complex terrain in Utah. The model domain includes Dugway Proving Ground, the target area for the Mountain Terrain Atmospheric Modeling and Observations (MATERHORN) program. Differences in PBL depths between a coarse- (10 km horizontal grid spacing) and a fine-grid (3.3 km) domain are expressed as a function of several parameters that describe the terrain variability, including the standard deviation and the Laplacian of the terrain elevation. PBL depths on fair weather days are larger in the coarse domain than in the fine-grid domain by more than 200 m over areas with unresolved ridges in the coarse-grid domain. Absolute differences are an order of magnitude larger in summer than in winter while relative differences are similar and on the order of 10%. The PBL depth differences can only be partly removed after correcting for the fine-grid terrain elevation in the coarse domain, indicating that unresolved atmospheric processes in the coarse-grid domain also account for the PBL depth differences. The results also demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between PBL depths and PBL heights when evaluating the performance of coarse-grid numerical models.