NCEP North American Regional Reanalysis Data

The NCEP North American Regional Reanalysis Data is a high resolution high frequency assimilated dataset covering the North American region. The model area is shown in Figure 4. The spatial resolution is 32.4 km, resulting in a total of 96673 nodes covering the area. The temporal resolution is 3 hours. The dataset covers a period from 1979 until the present moment. The dataset assimilates data from rawinsondes, dropsondes, pibals, aircraft, selected surface stations and geostationary satellites [ ]. For a detailed overview of the NARR model, please refer to the paper by F. Mesinger et al (see below). The paper may be located at the following URL: http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/mmb/rreanl/.

The full dataset consists of more than 400 climate variables which – when stored in NetCDF files – require storage of about 30 Terra Bytes. At EMD we hold and distribute a subset of the NARR data. The raw data is processed by EMD as the original data holds the vector components for the wind speeds only (U and V – winds). We convert the raw data into a format appropriate for use with wind turbine applications, i.e. wind speed and direction instead.

External Links

Homepage for Regional Reanalysis Questions and Answers at [http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/mmb/rreanl]

References

Fedor Mesinger, Geoff DiMego, Eugenia Kalnay, Kenneth Mitchell, Perry C. Shafran, Wesley Ebisuzaki, Dusan Jovic, Jack Woollen, Eric Rogers, Ernesto H. Berbery, Michael B. Ek, Yun Fan, Robert Grumbine, Wayne Higgins, Hong Li, Ying Lin, Geoff Manikin, David Parrish, and Wei Shi: North American Regional Reanalysis, Paper Submitted to the Bulletin of the AMS, 2005