IEM Reanalysis too coarse for WEPP usage in the mountains

[akrherz]

At the team call today, a comparison was shown with DEP's 0.01x0.01 climate files performing very poorly in the mountains. At issue was temperatures being too warm and not producing enough snow within the WEPP algorithm for snow generation. It seems clear to me that the 0.125x0.125 IEMRE domain is too coarse for provision of temperature information. I have great gnashing of teeth at the moment resolving how I wish to proceed. Step 1 is creating this issue 😆

[akrherz]

Some debugging cruft here for our CLI file of interest 109.31x033.65.cli

crude yearly means

	tmax	tmin	rad	wvl	wdir	tdew	maxr	bpcount	pcpn	rfactor
2007	25.0567	8.20164	511.57	2.87233	0	-0.456986	2.42827	1.74521	2.3314	3.59376
2008	23.8175	7.2847	520.505	3.49973	0	-2.05984	3.72055	1.81421	2.73123	4.46316
2009	24.5534	7.40466	510.373	3.38521	0	-1.51562	1.5854	1.2274	1.50123	1.56463
2010	22.8321	7.19178	523.696	3.46795	0	-0.691233	2.66487	1.54795	2.30995	6.71424
2011	23.5118	6.56219	533.822	3.71068	0	-2.41068	1.42579	1.28767	1.66195	0.982563
2012	25.1112	6.47705	530.781	3.2194	0	-2.23361	1.75945	1.0765	1.47257	1.75355
2013	23.614	5.88904	517.025	3.35068	0	-2.05123	2.32608	1.43288	1.95121	3.34223
2014	24.6447	6.62959	493.271	3.53178	0	-1.56082	2.83931	1.19452	1.66479	4.46618
2015	23.909	6.57205	472.082	3.32	0	1.22795	2.24426	1.50685	2.10649	2.16183
2016	22.2022	4.74126	498.003	3.55383	0	-1.51885	1.44507	1.21311	1.64489	1.46649
2017	23.2589	5.82986	495.323	3.75041	0	-2.46849	1.90286	1.08219	1.40671	2.10515
2018	22.6907	4.59973	492.184	3.70904	0	-2.54548	1.94569	1.20822	1.71553	2.1666
2019	20.9392	5.12904	487.362	3.79068	0	-1.8537	2.61769	1.66849	2.45205	3.90069
2020	22.9153	5.69508	510.09	4.12896	0	-2.85847	1.25308	0.863388	1.07784	1.05372
2021	22.1214	5.58	488.542	4.12329	0	-2.05534	2.86936	1.35616	1.93458	3.33954
2022	21.3655	5.38055	488.619	4.04356	0	-1.53534	3.19398	1.29863	1.8889	2.78217
2023	21.5907	4.34986	508.781	4.0874	0	-2.39863	2.30976	1.05753	1.59189	1.8498
2024	22.8251	5.63033	507.473	4.10765	0	-2.66585	1.73132	1	1.33801	1.38571

I think 2015 was a year of interest, for prism this is grid cell i=231, j=377 , PRISM has an average high of 16.2C and low of 1.6C, yikes. It also has 656 mm of precip, whereas DEP has 605.9, so that's not horrible, like temperature.

[akrherz]

The good news is that I had a lucid dream last night about this situation and believe now that I do not need to increase IEMRE's grid resolution just yet. The major issue was a lack of using high-res inputs to drive the 0.125 degree analysis. Feverishly cranking knobs to get a new downstream assessment of the situation.