Mesoscale optical turbulence simulations at Dome C: refinements

TL;DR

This study improves mesoscale optical turbulence simulations at Dome C, achieving near-perfect agreement with observations by refining the numerical configuration of the Meso-NH model, enabling reliable analysis of Antarctic atmospheric conditions.

Contribution

The paper introduces an enhanced numerical setup for the Meso-NH model, significantly improving optical turbulence predictions at Dome C compared to previous configurations.

Findings

Model results now match observations almost perfectly.

Surface layer thickness and free atmosphere seeing are accurately simulated.

High-resolution nested simulations are essential for precise optical turbulence modeling.

Abstract

In a recent paper the authors presented an extended study aiming at simulating the classical meteorological parameters and the optical turbulence at Dome C during the winter with the atmospherical mesoscale model Meso-NH. A statistical analysis has been presented and the conclusions of that paper have been very promising. Wind speed and temperature fields revealed to be very well reconstructed by the Meso-NH model with better performances than what has been achieved with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) global model, especially near the surface. All results revealed to be resolution-dependent and it has been proved that a grid-nesting configuration (3 domains) with a high horizontal resolution (1km) for the innermost domain is necessary to reconstruct all the optical turbulence features with a good correlation to measurements. High resolution simulations provided an averaged surface layer thickness just ~14 m higher than what is estimated by measurements, the seeing in the free atmosphere showed a dispersion from the observed one of just a few hundredths of an arcsecond (~0.05"). The unique limitation of the previous study was that the optical turbulence in the surface layer appeared overestimated by the model in both low and high resolution modes. In this study we present the results obtained with an improved numerical configuration. The same 15 nights have been simulated, and we show that the model results now match almost perfectly the observations in all their features: the surface thickness, the seeing in the free atmosphere as well as in the surface layer. This result permits us to investigate now other antarctic sites using a robust numerical model well adapted to the extreme polar conditions (Meso-NH).