Consequences of elevation characterization on simulations of drainage flows in mountain valleys

摘要

Many important phenomena in mountain meteorology are sensitive to, or driven by, land surface characteristics. Thus, accurately representing surface-atmosphere interactions within an atmospheric model requires a realistic characterization of the land surface. Such a characterization must be based on data extracted from a geographical database and transformed so that it is consistent with the needs of the numerical model. In such a process, there are two major classes of error that must be understood and minimized whenever possible. The first class involves the accuracy, precision, and resolution of the geographical data itself. The second class is error introduced by the transformations used to assimilate the data into the atmospheric model. The general objectives of this research are twofold: to understand the effects of errors within a geographical database upon the accuracy of the atmospheric model simulation and to design optimal techniques for the transformation of the data.