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OMEGA is a novel multiscale atmospheric simulation system for advanced, high-resolution weather forecasting and forecasting dosage and hazard levels due to the atmospheric release of aerosols and gases. It has a horizontal grid resolution that ranges from 100 km to 1 km and a vertical resolution that ranges from a few meters to 1 km. OMEGA represents a significant advance in the field of weather prediction. Operational forecast models in current use are scale-specific. Their fixed rectangular grid structure limits the resolution of both the input boundary conditions and the resulting atmospheric simulation. The OMEGA model grid, which is unstructured in the horizontal, adapts to the underlying surface features and can dynamically adapt to atmospheric phenomena as they evolve.
The major advantages of OMEGA over the current state-of-the-art include the ability to resolve the surface terrain down to scales of 1 km and along with that the local perturbations on the larger scale wind field. This local wind field perturbation is of extreme importance in determining the trajectory of an aerosol or gas release or plume. However, in order to calculate this local perturbation, it is important to include all of the physical parameters and processes, which affect the local flow. These include not only the topography, but also the land use, the land/water composition, the vegetation, the soil moisture, the snow cover (if appropriate), and the surface moisture and energy budgets. The inclusion of this additional physics, some of which is only appropriate because of the increased spatial resolution, represents an additional advance in the state-of-the-art.
Simulations: Hurricanes!
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