High Resolution Results and Scalability of Numerical Modeling of Wind Flow at White Sand Missile Range

The NTU/ Purdue nonhydrostatic numerical model has been developed over the last 6 years to predict atmospheric motions and conditions for both the mesoscale (200 m to 200 km) and large scale turbulence scale (20 m to 200 m). It is a fully explicit, compressible three-dimensional code and has compared quite to a wide variety of known analytical solution or observed situations including the Boulder Wind Storm, nonhydrostatic and hydrostatic mountain waves for flow over an isolated mountain and a 2-dimensional mountain barrier, and buoyant bubble. The model has application to FCS requirements for providing fine scale weather information for small unit operations in near real-time. It will enable us to study and better understand the problems of diagnosing and predicting atmospheric flow and conditions in real terrain. It is also designed and being applied to simulate larger turbulent eddies particularly in stable atmospheric boundary layers which are important for night operations. Large scale turbulence is a key to accounting for small scale turbulence that affects electromagnetic and acoustic propagation and governs local diffusion. This paper considers both idealized and real terrain simulations in which the model was applied at high resolution (∆x, ∆y of 500 m to 1 km) to the Organ, San Andres and Franklin Mountains region on and near the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico. We used DTED level 1 terrain data (3 arc second resolution) to generate the model’s terrain fields.