Department of Civil & Environmental
Engineering
Title:
Regional Climate – Weather Research and Forecasting (CWRF)
Model Development and Application
Speaker:
Dr Xin-Zhong Liang
Professor
Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Science and Earth System
Science Interdisciplinary Center
University of Maryland, College Park
Organizers:
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE)
Tropical Marine Science Institute (TMSI)
Centre for Hazards Research (CHR)
Target audience:
All are welcome. Admission is free.
Date:
Friday, 15 July 2011
Time:
3.00 pm to 4.00 pm
Venue:
Seminar Room EA-02-11
Faculty of Engineering, NUS
General Enquiry:
Mr Yong Tat Fah
Tel: 65162149
Contact Person:
Email: ceeytf@nus.edu.sg
Dr LIONG Shie-Yui
Tel: 65163081
Email: tmslsy@nus.edu.sg
Abstract
The CWRF has been developed on the basis of the Weather Research and Forecasting
(WRF) model by incorporating numerous improvements that are crucial to climate scales,
including interactions between land–atmosphere–ocean, convection–microphysics and
cloud–aerosol–radiation, and system consistency throughout all process modules. The
CWRF improvements have been accomplished through iterative, extensive model
refinements, sensitivity experiments, and rigorous evaluations over the past 8 years. As a
result, the CWRF has demonstrated greater capability and better performance in simulating
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the U.S. regional climate than the existing CMM5 (Climate extension of the MM5) and the
WRF. This presentation will provide a general model description and basic skill evaluation
over the U.S. Other CWRF capabilities and applications for climate change impacts as well
as preparation for downscaling in the Singapore region will also be discussed.
About the Speaker
Xin-Zhong Liang received his Ph.D. (1987) in Atmospheric Sciences from the Institute of
Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. He then worked in the State
University of New York at Stony Brook (3 years) and later at Albany (10 years). During all
the previous years, his research focused on the development and application of global
general circulation models. He joined the Illinois State Water Survey in 1999 and became a
Professor of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, in 2010. His research emphasized on regional climate and environmental
modeling. In particular, he led a group to develop and apply an integrated Climate, Air
Quality and Impact Modeling System (CAQIMS), which incorporates global general
circulation models, mesoscale multi-nested regional climate models, state-of-the-art air
quality models, comprehensive emissions inventory models, advanced terrestrial hydrology
models, water quality models, and dynamic ecosystem models. He is now a Professor in the
Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Science and Earth System Science Interdisciplinary
Center, University of Maryland, College Park. He is the head of the Earth System Model
Research & Development Laboratory. He is the lead developer of the recently released
regional Climate-Weather Research and Forecasting model (CWRF). He served as the PI or
Co-PI for numerous research grant projects supported by USEPA, DOE, NOAA, USDA,
NASA, and NSF. He has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals. His
expertise is in the areas of climate dynamics, with the focus on numerical modeling and
physical understanding of land-ocean-atmosphere and convection-cloud-radiation
interactions, seasonal climate predictions, future climate change projections and
environmental consequences (terrestrial hydrology, ecosystem dynamics, air quality, water
quality).
The Speaker is in Singapore on an invitation from the Tropical Marine Science
Institute and the Integrated Sustainability Solutions (ISS) Research Cluster of NUS.
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Visitors may park their cars at the Cash-Card operated Car park 2A opposite Engineering Block 3A.
EA-02-11
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