Spring 2019 | Gerard Ketefian tries to “get big computers to tell him if it’s going to be sunny or rainy or snowy tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, and…” that’s how he explains his job to a child - and he has two -- a 2-year old boy and 4-year old girl. Gerard’s background is engineering. He has a B.S. in civil and mechanical engineering and M.S. in environmental engineering with emphasis on environmental fluid mechanics (both air and water). Gerard’s Ph.D. involved computational fluid dynamics applied to atmospheric… Read More

Spring 2019 | Jacob Radford, a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University and visitor to the DTC during June of 2018, investigated the forecast skill of the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model for banded snowfall events. In particular, he evaluated the HRRR’s ability to capture the location, areal extent, orientation, and aspect ratio of these locally enhanced regions of reflectivity. In theory, snowbands should be adequately resolved by the HRRR thanks to its fine grid-spacing, but model skill has not yet been assessed… Read More

Spring 2019 | The Model Evaluation for Research Innovation Transition (MERIT) project provides a critical framework for physics developers to test innovations within their schemes using selected meteorological cases that have been analyzed in depth.  Comparing their results to baseline MERIT simulations will allow developers to determine whether their innovations address model shortcomings and improve operational numerical weather prediction. For the DTC’s AOP 2018, three high-impact global FV3 baseline cases were selected for in-… Read More

Spring 2019 | Model Evaluation Tools – Tropical Cyclone (MET-TC) was first developed in 2012 by the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) as part of the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP) to provide a set of tools to aid in tropical cyclone forecast evaluation and verification. The primary goal of MET-TC was to replicate the functionality of the National Hurricane Center (NHC) verification software while utilizing the modular tools available within the MET software framework. The MET-TC software was first released with METv4.1… Read More

Winter 2019 | I am the Co-chair, along with Hendrik Tolman, of the Unified Forecast System – Steering Committee (UFS-SC), one of the governance bodies in NOAA’s emerging community modeling effort. The overall goal of the UFS activity is to have a unified forecast system that can be configured to meet the many applications in NOAA’s product suite.

Winter 2019 | Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI)/Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) are operational data assimilation systems, open to contributions from scientists and software engineers from both operations and research. The development and maintenance of NOAA GSI/EnKF data assimilation systems are coordinated and managed by the Data Assimilation Review Committee (DARC), which incorporates all major GSI/EnKF data assimilation development teams in the United States within a unified community framework. DARC established a code… Read More

Summer 2018 | The Next Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS) multi-year Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) connects federal and academic experts in the numerical weather prediction community to support the end-to-end functionality of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Production Suite. The goal of the SIP is to help evolve the NGGPS into a Unified Forecast System (UFS) for operations and research. The SIP governance includes UFS Working Groups who represent the essential science, technical, and design… Read More

Summer 2018 | NOAA and the National Weather Service (NWS) are embarking on a new strategy of community engagement for developing the numerical weather prediction models that provide NWS forecasters with the best possible guidance. By engaging the broader numerical modeling community, NWS will leverage the vast modeling expertise that resides therein, since each model developer offers a unique perspective about modeling challenges and possible solutions.

Summer 2018 | Guoqing Ge on Trail Ridge Road

Summer 2018 | The Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast system (HWRF) is one of NOAA’s operational models used to predict the track, intensity, and structure of tropical cyclones. Each winter, scientists at NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center (EMC), the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC), and NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division (HRD) perform testing and evaluation (T&E) on possible changes to the HWRF physics schemes, dynamic core, and data assimilation system that have the potential to improve HWRF predictions. Many of these… Read More

Summer 2018 | Advection is a computationally expensive process in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models. Therefore, time-sensitive operational forecast models sometimes sum up the hydrometeors, including cloud water, rainwater, ice and snow, prior to calling the advection scheme. For this configuration, the model only needs to calculate the advection of the total condensate. However, the impact of such a time-saving technique has not been systematically evaluated. With the release of HWRF 3.9a, a version of the operational HWRF… Read More

Summer 2018 | The 2018 DTC Community Unified Forecast System Test Plan and Metrics Workshop was held at NOAA’s National Center for Weather and Climate Prediction (NCEP) on July 30 - August 1, 2018. The major goal of this workshop was to work towards a community test plan with common validation and verification metrics for the emerging Unified Forecast System (UFS). The plan will serve as a guide for the Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) community for testing and evaluating new developments for the UFS models and components by… Read More

Summer 2014 |

Winter 2014 | As numerical model predictions and functions proliferate and move toward ever higher resolution, verification techniques and procedures must also advance and adapt.

Summer 2013 | As the 2013 hurricane season continues in the North Atlantic and eastern North Pacific basins, a newly minted HWRF model is providing forecasts for the National Hurricane Center (NHC) on a new machine and with significant code additions. On July 24, the operational HWRF went live on the Weather and Climate Operational Supercomputing System (WCOSS). A research version for testing continues in use on the jet computers at the NOAA ESRL Global Systems Division. New, more efficient code promises to provide… Read More