Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Atmospheric Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/atmosres Characteristics of different convective parameterization schemes on the simulation of intensity and track of severe extratropical cyclones over North Atlantic P.K. Pradhan a,b,⁎ , Margarida L.R. Liberato b,c , Juan A. Ferreira b , S. Dasamsetti d , S. Vijaya Bhaskara Rao a a Department of Physics, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, India b Escola de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD), Vila Real, Portugal c Instituto Dom Luiz, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal d National Center for Midium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF), Noida, India ARTICLE INFO Keywords: ARW-WRF model Convective parameterization scheme Extratropical cyclone Intensity and track Iberian peninsula North Atlantic Ocean ABSTRACT The role of the convective parameterization schemes (CPSs) in the ARW-WRF (WRF) mesoscale model is ex- amined for extratropical cyclones (ETCs) over the North Atlantic Ocean. The simulation of very severe winter storms such as Xynthia (2010) and Gong (2013) are considered in this study. Most popular CPSs within WRF model, along with Yonsei University (YSU) planetary boundary layer (PBL) and WSM6 microphysical para- meterization schemes are incorporated for the model experiments. For each storm, four numerical experiments were carried out using New Kain Fritsch (NKF), Betts-Miller-Janjic (BMJ), Grell 3D Ensemble (Gr3D) and no convection scheme (NCS) respectively. The prime objectives of these experiments were to recognize the best CPS that can forecast the intensity, track, and landfall over the Iberian Peninsula in advance of two days. The WRF model results such as central sea level pressure (CSLP), wind field, moisture flux convergence, geopotential height, jet stream, track and precipitation have shown sensitivity CPSs. The 48-hour lead simulations with BMJ schemes produce the best simulations both regarding ETCs intensity and track than Gr3D and NKF schemes. The average MAE and RMSE of intensities are least that (6.5 hPa in CSLP and 3.4 ms -1 in the 10-m wind) found in BMJ scheme. The MAE and RMSE for and intensity and track error have revealed that NCS produces large errors than other CPSs experiments. However, for track simulation of these ETCs, at 72-, 48- and 24-hour means track errors were 440, 390 and 158 km respectively. In brevity, BMJ and Gr3D schemes can be used for short and medium range predictions of the ETCs over North Atlantic. For the evaluation of precipitation distributions using Gr3D scheme are good agreement with TRMM satellite than other CPSs. 1. Introduction The extratropical cyclones (ETCs) occurs over subtropical North Atlantic Ocean causes one of the most expensive losses of life, property at the place of their landfall at coastal regions of Europe. The dangerous character of ETCs are associated with strong winds, heavy precipitation and storm surges during the winter season have produced significant damages and substantial economic loss over the southwestern of Europe (Swiss Re, 2008). Due to very low pressure at the core of ETCs that produces violent winds and torrential precipitation evenly distributed around the centre and thus, categorised as wind and precipitation storms (Karremann et al., 2016). Most of the ETCs formed over mid- latitude of North Atlantic region are cold core systems associated with baroclinic instability and North Atlantic Oscillations (NAO) as dis- cussed in Ulbrich et al. (2009); Pinto et al. (2008). In recent decades, there were five severe storms viz., Kyrill (Fink et al., 2009), Klaus (Liberato et al., 2011), Xynthia (Liberato et al., 2013), Gong (Liberato, 2014), and Stephanie (Ferreira et al., 2014), that caused intensive da- mage and substantial economic losses over Iberian Peninsula and ad- joining European region. With a continuous supply of moisture from North Atlantic, the storms reached the maximum intensity and passed through the coast of the Europe, even though they were originated at unusual lower latitudes. Moreover, the occurrence of cold spells in the winter season is related to low storm track activity over the part of mid- latitude continental regions, and therefore, storm tracks and their in- tensities are influenced by continental temperature as well as moisture http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2017.09.007 Received 23 November 2016; Received in revised form 21 August 2017; Accepted 12 September 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Physics, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh 517 502, India. E-mail address: prabodha@utad.pt (P.K. Pradhan). Atmospheric Research 199 (2018) 128–144 Available online 14 September 2017 0169-8095/ © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. MARK