Winter 2017 | “These metrics can provide very succinct information about many aspects of forecast performance without having to resort to complicated, computationally expensive techniques. ”

Winter 2017 | As the new Director of the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC), I have the pleasure of leading nearly two hundred world-class scientists, engineers and other staff in developing, transitioning, improving and maintaining a suite of global and regional environmental models to support the National Weather Service (NWS) mission of the protecting life and property for our country.  To meet the challenges of this mission, EMC has formed strategic partnerships with numerous community organizations over the years to collaboratively… Read More

Winter 2017 | As a visiting scientist at the University of Maryland in 2005, Man Zhang learned of Colorado’s reputation of being a great place to live. When her husband had an opportunity to come to Colorado as a visiting Ph.D. student, they didn’t think twice about moving. They love Colorado and have been in the Boulder area for almost 10 years. Man was a post-doc at CIRA in the ensemble data assimilation group. She applied the hybrid variational-ensemble data assimilation system (HVEDAS) developed at CIRA to the NOAA operational… Read More

Winter 2017 | The community Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) modeling system was upgraded to version 3.8a on November 21, 2016.  This release includes all components of the HWRF system: scripts, data preprocessing, vortex initialization, data assimilation, atmospheric and ocean models, coupler, postprocessor, and vortex tracker.  In addition to default operational features, the release includes capabilities to perform idealized tropical cyclone simulations run with alternate physics, and backwards compatibility for inner… Read More

Winter 2017 | As visitors to the DTC in 2016, Michael Iacono and John Henderson of Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER) used the Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting model (HWRF) to investigate an improved way of representing the vertical overlap of partial cloudiness and showed that this process strongly influences the transfer of radiation in the atmosphere and can impact the evolution of simulated tropical cyclones. Clouds are a critical element of Earth’s climate because they strongly affect both the incoming solar (or… Read More

Winter 2017 | The DTC hosted its annual DTC Science Advisory Board (SAB) meeting on September 14-15, 2016.  This annual event provides an opportunity for the DTC to present a review of DTC key accomplishments over the past three years to representatives of the research community and to collect input directed at shaping a strategy for the future.  “The DTC enables and supports a wide variety of research-to-operations and operations-to-… Read More

Winter 2017 | You can join weekly webinars to discuss the performance of EMC’s forecast/analysis systems from a synoptic and mesoscale perspective. The weekly webinar is led by EMC’s Model Evaluation Group and participants include model developers, NCEP service centers, NWS regional and field offices, DTC staff, academic community and private sector. Webinars serve as a forum for EMC to… Read More

Summer 2017 | A Google Search: Documentation is the Most Valuable Thing You Do (from cyborginstitute.org/projects/administration/documentation/). Good documentation makes software and tools more valuable and more durable, and although documentation can be a great expense, in the long term it’s almost always worthwhile.

Spring 2016 | During the next decade, the Air Force will be working with our national and international modeling partners toward a goal of consolidated capabilities

Spring 2016 | Ralph Stoffler, a member of the US government Senior Executive Service, is the USAF Director of Weather, and the USAF Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. In this capacity, he is responsible for the development of weather and space environmental doctrine, policies, plans, programs, and standards in support of Army and Air Force operations. He is responsible for overseeing and advocating for Air Force weather resources and monitors the execution of the weather program. He is the functional manager for 4,300… Read More

Spring 2016 | Circumstances can make it hard to connect with people, and with snowstorms and parent-teacher conferences, catching up with Chunhua Zhou took a few tries. But meeting her and learning about her work in the DTC made the effort worthwhile. Chunhua and her younger brother grew up in central China. While he still lives there and runs a small business, Chunhua went to the University of Hawaii in 2003, receiving her Ph.D. in Meteorology in 2009. Her thesis studies involved the dynamics of the tropical intraseasonal oscillation and… Read More

Spring 2016 | The DTC hurricane team has provided training opportunities to learn the Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) system to both general users and active developers over the past several months. The community HWRF modeling system (version 3.7a released in August 2015) is compatible with the NCEP 2015 operational implementation, which includes high-resolution deterministic tropical cyclone numerical guidance for all global oceanic basins. Due to the demonstrated skill and advanced capabilities… Read More

Spring 2016 | This past winter, the DTC had the pleasure of hosting visiting scientist Dr. Liantang Deng of the Numerical Weather Prediction Center, China Meteorological Administration (CMA). His visit stemmed from the combined Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) and Global/Regional Assimilation and PrEdiction System (GRAPES) modeling workshop in 2014, when Dr. Bill Kuo, Director of the DTC, helped facilitate interactions between the DTC and CMA. During his 2-month stay, he evaluated… Read More

Spring 2016 | A sea ice modeling workshop was convened on 3-4 February 2016 in Boulder, CO for the purpose of informing NOAA on the inclusion and selection of a community-contributed sea ice model into the future Next-Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS). Another workshop goal was to identify potential research and development opportunities and gaps. The workshop was hosted at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) by the DTC’s Global Model Test Bed, and counted as sponsors the National Weather Service, the NOAA Office… Read More

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