Winter 2016 | Robust testing and evaluation of research innovations is a critical component of the Research-to-Operations (R2O) process and is performed for NCEP by the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC). At the foundation of the DTC testing and evaluation (T&E) system is the Model Evaluation Tools (MET), which is also supported to the community through the DTC. The verification team within the DTC has been working closely with DTC teams as well as the research and operational communities (e.g. NOAA HIWPP program and NCEP/EMC… Read More

Winter 2016 |

Winter 2016 |

Winter 2016 |

Winter 2016 |

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 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 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 2016 | As a Junior Atmospheric Science major, at the University of North Dakota (UND), Kathryn Newman organized 25 weather labs for hundreds of aviation students that were required to take Meteorology (ATSC 110). The multi-tasking and organizational skills she developed come in handy as the DTC Hurricane Task Lead to oversee transitioning Hurricane Task research to EMC. “It’s challenging to keep track of all the moving parts in modeling research and getting them into operations,” she says, “But it is cool to be involved at this… Read More

Autumn 2016 | Advance the forecast skill of the DTC-supported HWRF modeling system through improved physics and/or initialization Advance the analysis capability of the DTC-supported Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation and/or the NOAA Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) Data Assimilation systems through development, testing, and evaluation of advanced data assimilation techniques and the addition of new data types or measurements Transition innovations in atmospheric physical parameterizations to NOAA’s Next-Generation Global Prediction… Read More

Summer 2016 | While national modeling centers can benefit from the expertise in the broader community of parameterization developers, the social and technical barriers to a community researcher implementing and testing a new parameterization or set of parameterizations (a physics suite) in an operational model are high. Physical parameterization codes are often implemented so that they are strongly linked to a particular model dynamical core, with dependencies on grid structure, prognostic variables, and even time-… Read More

Summer 2016 |

Summer 2016 |

Summer 2016 |

Summer 2016 | As a DTC Visitor in 2015, Paul Roebber explored an idea for generating ensemble weather predictions known as evolutionary programming (EP). The method relies on a gradually and increasingly restrictive cost function to produce and to evaluate succeeding generations of a population of algorithms until such time as a best ensemble solution is determined based on cross-validation. The approach was developed by Roebber to produce baseline prediction equations equivalent to linear or nonlinear multiple regression… Read More