A history of mesoscale model development

Evolution has occurred in dynamical and physics representations in these models. The dynamics has had to change from hydrostatic to fully nonhydrostatic equations to handle the finer scales that have become possible in the last few decades with advancing computer power, which has enabled real-time forecasting to go to finer grid sizes.

Meanwhile the physics has also become more sophisticated than the initial representations of the major processes associated with the surface, boundary layer, radiation, clouds and convection. As resolutions have become finer, mesoscale models have had to change paradigms associated with assumptions related to what is considered sub-grid scale needing parameterization, and what is resolved well enough to be explicitly handled by the dynamics.