Polar Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) simulation of West Antarctic climate, summer 1980-2015

High-resolution simulation of summer climate over West Antarctica using the Polar-optimised version of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model conducted at British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK. Runs are conducted for summer (January-centred) 1980-2015, i.e. from December 1979 to February 2015, for December, January and February (DJF). Experiments were carried out for the NERC West Antarctic Grant (NE/K00445X/1) during 2014-2017. The project is aimed at understanding the variability and climatology over the West Antarctic ice sheet and ice shelves as well as to project the future change over the twenty-first century. The model outer domain encompasses the West Antarctic ice sheet and a large part of the surrounding ocean at 45 km horizontal grid spacing, and the nested (one-way) inner domain covers the Amundsen Sea Embayment at 15 km grid spacing. The model uses vertical eta coordinates with both domains have a model top of 50 hPa, and 30 vertical levels.