Winter 2015 | A successful workshop on Parameterization of Moist Processes for Next-Generation Weather Prediction Models was hosted by NOAA and DTC at the NOAA Center for Weather & Climate Prediction (NCWPC) in College Park, MD, Jan 27-29, 2015. A large number of participants from NOAA, the international operational community, and the research community gathered to discuss topics including microphysics, sub-grid scale clouds and turbulence, and deep convection. The first day of the workshop included two keynote presentations and… Read More

Autumn 2013 | The Tropical Cyclone Modeling Team (TCMT) was formed as part RAL’s Joint Numerical Testbed (JNT) in 2009 to help assess hurricane and tropical storm forecasts from experimental models. As such, its members interact with the DTC in two particular ways: by designing methods and products appropriate for tropical cyclone verification that can be installed in maintained software at the DTC, and by providing both real-time and retrospective performance measures for each years’ hurricane forecasts. At a working level,… Read More

Autumn 2016 | In August 2014, numerical weather prediction modelers attended a workshop to discuss dynamic core requirements and attri- butes for the NGGPS, and developed a battery of tests to be conducted in three phases over 18 months. Six existing dynamical cores were identified as potential candidates for NGGPS. During Phase 1, a team of evaluators ran benchmarks to look at performance, both meteorological and computational, and the stability of the core. The performance benchmark measured the… Read More

Autumn 2017 | Faculty and graduate students at universities typically conduct basic research to better understand the fundamental workings of their area of interest, which in our field is the atmosphere. Transitioning these findings into practical applications, including operational weather forecasting, is then done by national labs and their cooperative institutes.  Yet in many cases, university researchers are working on problems that are directly relevant to operations, and have the potential (with a little help) to be considered for… Read More

Autumn 2016 | NOAA’s testbeds and proving grounds (NOAA TBPG) are an important link between research advances and applications, and especially NOAA operations. Some are … Read More

Autumn 2017 | Evan knew he wanted to be a meteorologist when he was five years old -- every type of thunderstorm that blew through Kendall, FL enamored him. When Joe Cione, a hurricane researcher moved in across the street, his future career was sealed. After graduating in 2010 from Florida State University with a B.S. in meteorology, Evan moved to Boulder for graduate school at the University of Colorado, where he analyzed model simulations and radar data from supercell thunderstorms. Cione serendipitously moved to Boulder about the time… Read More

Autumn 2014 | An old management adage says that if you need some new task done NOW, ask someone who is already busy. Although she probably cringes to hear it, this applies well to Tara, with an exception: she would first offer to take it on. Her tireless approach to work follows pretty directly from a commitment to accept new challenges in new places. In practice, it has led to twists and turns along the way. After completing her Master’s degree at Colorado State University in aerosol/cloud interactions in marine stratus, her graduate… Read More

Autumn 2017 | The terrain-following sigma coordinate has been implemented in many Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) systems, including the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, and has been used with success for many years. However, terrain-following coordinates are known to induce small-scale horizontal and vertical accelerations over areas of steep terrain due to the reflection of topography in the model levels.  These accelerations introduce error into the model equations and can impact model forecasts, especially as errors… Read More

Autumn 2014 | Researchers from the DTC plan to provide numerical model runs from a preliminary version of the North American Rapid Refresh Ensemble system (Pre-NARRE) to the Hydrometeorological Testbed of the Weather Prediction Center (HMT/ WPC) during their current Winter Exercise. The DTC Ensemble Task will run the ensemble system (most likely on the NOAA hjet computing system) and post-process some of the results for HMT/WPC. Members of the ensemble (eight in total) will be produced from both WRF/ RUC and NMMB dynamical cores, and will… Read More

Autumn 2017 | As a 2017 DTC visitor, William Gallus is using the Community Leveraged Unified Ensemble (CLUE) output from the 2016 NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed Spring Experiment to study the impact of mixed physics in a convection-allowing ensemble.  Two of the 2016 CLUE ensembles were similar in their use of mixed initial and lateral boundary conditions (at the side edges of the model domain), but one of them also added mixed physics, using four different microphysics schemes and three different planetary boundary layer schemes.… Read More

Autumn 2016 | As visitors to the DTC in 2015, Jason Otkin, Chris Rozoff, and Sarah Griffin explored using object-based verification methods to assess the accuracy of cloud forecasts from the experimental High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model. Though the forecast accuracy could be assessed using traditional statistics such as root mean square error or bias, additional information about errors in the spatial distribution of the cloud field could be obtained by using more… Read More

Autumn 2017 | The first Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) Users’ Workshop was held in 2000. Since then, eighteen annual workshops have been organized and hosted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado to provide a platform where developers and users can share new developments, test results, and feedback. This exchange ensures the WRF model continues to progress and remain relevant. The workshop program has evolved through the years. In 2006, instructional sessions were introduced, with the first… Read More

Autumn 2014 | The DTC hosted the 5th Community Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) Tutorial on July 14-16 of this summer at the NCAR Foothills Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. One of several outreach events sponsored recently by the DTC, this tutorial was held in collaboration with other major GSI development teams from around the United States. With an ultimate goal of providing operational capabilities to the research community, this series of tutorials has become a primary training resource whereby both operational and research… Read More

Autumn 2017 | A SCM replaces advection from a dynamical core with forcing that approximates how the atmospheric column state changes due to large-scale horizontal winds. An atmospheric physics suite then calculates impacts to radiation, convection, microphysics, vertical diffusion and other physical processes as the forcing alters the column state. The SCM approach is conceptually simple, extremely quick to run (less than a minute on a laptop), and makes interpretation of results less ambiguous because it eliminates three-dimensional… Read More

Autumn 2014 | Announcements, Publications and More VISITOR PROJECT AWARDS Paul Roebber (Univ of Wisconsin - Milwaukee):Demonstration Project: Development of a Large Member Ensemble Forecast System for Heavy Rainfall using Evolutionary Programming. WORKSHOPS, TUTORIALS, EVENTS Physics Workshop The DTC and NOAA will convene a workshop entitled ‘Parameterization of moist process for next-generation numerical weather prediction models… Read More