Abstract:

The Great Lakes of Eastern North America is the largest fresh water system on the surface Earth, and it is known to inflict important influence on the climate of the surrounding regions. Forecast of climate for the Great Lakes Basin region requires resolving the lake effects in an accurate way. Therefore coupling a lake model into the climate forecast model would greatly improve the model results. However, the effectiveness of the lake model require detailed analysis to understand.

Currently we use regional weather forecast model (WRF) is coupled with the European FLake model to include lake effects in climate simulation. This climate modelling system is executed with true lake bathymetry, or an artificial condition of universal lake depth of 1m. Comparing results from the two model runs with different bathymetry would reveal effectiveness of the lake model, as well as the spacial range which lake effects extends into the surrounding regions