Estudio de la influencia de la resolución espacial en la simulación de fenómenos meteorológicos extremos en Tenerife

Abstract

The Canary Islands are characterized by having a mild and dry climate throughout the year, however, rainfall is more abundant than expected due to the relief of the islands. Furthermore, under specific meteorological circumstances, the orography of the islands produces an amplifying effect, causing severe local precipitation events. The importance of predicting these events is key for aeronautical navigation, agriculture, sports and, especially, the prevention of natural disasters. Specifically, this work will study the heavy rains that took place in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 2002 and caused floods throughout the capital, losses worth millions of euros and the death of eight people. Furthermore, the AEMET was not able to predict the magnitude of these precipitations, so the population was not alerted. Likewise, the AEMET carried out a subsequent study in which they tried to reproduce these precipitations by analyzing in depth the wind and pressure fields and the convective structures. In addition, they carried out some simulations modifying the resolution to try to improve the results. However, due to the complexity of the phenomenon and the scarcity of data, they did not succeed. In this work, the same day will be analyzed with the WRF model to try to replicate these atmospheric conditions. For this, several simulations will be carried out using different parameters to determine which set of them provides results closest to the event that occurred on the island of Tenerife.