For the air pollution modelling studies over highly complex terrain, vertical wind profiles are essential. In the article we present evaluation about using the WRF model as the source of wind profile information. We tested WRF’s one day short-term forecasts at 4 km and half hour resolution running every day to obtain 3D meteorological fields and compared these data with the different meteorological stations. The results show an inadequate agreement with ground level meteorological stations, especially in basins and valleys, and a better agreement with stations situated at the top of hills and with a tower station. There is also a novel approach to the terrain complexity characterisation of the area under examination defined – ‘height and length of Topographic complexity, hlTc’. It is invented to quickly and unambiguously compare the model’s resolution and terrain complexity and the consequential meteorological characteristics we wish to describe. The goal of introducing the new hlTc index is the numerical description of the consistency of the horizontal resolution of the applied model with the actual dimensions of terrain complexity.
COBISS.SI-ID: 26486567