Advanced WEather GENerator for a two-dimensional grid (AWE-GEN-2d)

The stochastic weather generator model, Advanced WEather GENerator for a two-dimensional grid (AWE-GEN-2d) is presented.

The model combines physical and stochastic approaches to simulate key meteorological variables at of sub-kilometer and sub-hourly spatial and temporal resolution. Simulated variables include: precipitation, cloud cover, near-surface air temperature, solar radiation, vapor pressure, atmospheric pressure, and near-surface wind. The model requires spatially distributed data for the calibration process, which can be obtained by remote sensing devices (weather radar and satellites), reanalysis data sets, and ground stations.

AWE-GEN-2d is parsimonious in terms of computational demand and therefore is particularly suitable for studies where exploring internal climatic variability at multiple spatial and temporal scales is fundamental. Applications of the model include models of environmental systems, such as hydrological and geomorphological models, where high-resolution spatial and temporal meteorological forcing is crucial.

In the example given, the weather generator was calibrated and validated for the Engelberg region, an area with complex topography in the Swiss Alps. For more information please see the paper by Peleg et al. (2017).

The code works smoothly on Matlab version 2017-9 and was not tested for later Matlab versions.