2022-03-29 | The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) is pleased to announce the release of version 4.0.0 of their end-to-end containerized numerical weather prediction (NWP) system. These software containers have been established for community use to quickly spin up an NWP forecast system [using the WRF Pre-Processing System (WPS), Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, and Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) data assimilation] that can then be post-processed [using the Unified Post Processor (UPP)] and verified [using… Read More
Software Release: METplus v4.1.0 Coordinated Release
2022-03-15 | The DTC is pleased to announce the release of the multi-component verification framework called the enhanced Model Evaluation Tools (METplus), or METplus. METplus contains a suite of Python wrappers and ancillary scripts to enhance the user's ability to quickly set-up and run MET. METplus also has an analysis suite including METviewer and METexpress user interfaces and METdatadb, METcalcpy, and METplotpy as shared packages for loading and storing MET output as well as aggregating and… Read More
Lead Story: Engaging Forecast Community in UFS Model Development: UFS Forecasters Workshops 2020-21
Winter 2022 | With the advent of the Unified Forecast System (UFS), the operational model development at the National Weather Service (NWS) is increasingly becoming a collective effort that includes contributions from multiple NOAA labs, national agencies, and university research groups. The NWS forecasters are the primary stakeholders of the UFS’ operational forecast products, and therefore, continued engagement with them is important for staying abreast of the real-world performance of the model… Read More
Director's Corner: DTC Transferal of Code, and Certain Tasks and Responsibilities to EPIC
Bill Mahoney
Winter 2022 | The DTC is at an interesting pivot point in its 19-year history as it has the opportunity to redirect its efforts back to its original imperative of advanced numerical weather prediction (NWP) testing and evaluation. This opportunity is due to the establishment of the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC). As stated in the DTC charter, “The DTC was initiated in 2003 as a means for the NWP community… Read More
Who's Who: Julie Prestopnik
Winter 2022 | Julie and her older brother grew up in South Florida. She worked her way through high school and part of college as a cashier at Publix Super Markets. She earned her college degree in accounting from the University of Central Florida (UCF). During her college years, she started working for the accounting department at the UCF Foundation, and by her senior year, she had earned a prestigious internship with Coopers and Lybrand.… Read More
Bridges to Operations: A Comprehensive Retrospective Evaluation of the Global Synthetic Weather Radar Products Using METplus
Winter 2022 | Traditional radar product integrity suffers from gaps in coverage over large areas. While some geographical areas are fortunate to have ground- and/or satellite-based radar coverage, most areas around the globe do not have complete coverage from reliable radar networks. The use of radar-based products is advantageous for understanding current weather conditions and how weather systems may evolve over time. Convection and precipitating weather systems often… Read More
Visitors: Physics Process-based Evaluation of the Hurricane Vortex Structure and Size of Tropical Cyclones in HAFS
Visitor: Shaowu Bao
Winter 2022 | The Hurricane WRF (HWRF) has been the US operational hurricane forecast model since 2007. The Hurricane Forecast and Analysis System (HAFS), based on the GFDL Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere Dynamical Core (FV3), a scalable and flexible dynamical core, is the likely candidate to replace the operational HWRF. HAFS is the focus of a Unified Forecast System - Research to Operations (UFS-R2O) hurricane modeling project and the next generation hurricane forecast system.… Read More
Community Connections: UFS SRW Application Training: The Wrap Up
Winter 2022 | Supporting the development of the Unified Forecast System (UFS) has been a central focus of the DTC for several years now. Many staff have concentrated on support, development, and training of this new state-of-the-art system that bridges the gap between the research and operational communities. In September 2021, we… Read More
Did you know?: DTC Visitor Program accepting applications
Winter 2022 | Despite the challenges of COVID, the DTC Visitor Program is thriving. With the incremental opening of NCAR facilities, some visitors have been working on site, while others have been collaborating with DTC staff remotely. We invite researchers to apply to the program as an opportunity to collaborate with us on a diverse range of exciting projects. Our program has hosted visitors who have made cutting-edge enhancements to DTC software and tools, model improvements, innovated… Read More
Lead Story: An EPIC Journey Toward Open Innovation and Development to Advance Operational Numerical Weather Prediction Systems
Autumn 2021 | On April 26, NOAA announced that Raytheon Intelligence & Space (RI&S) would be the development partner that would unite the community in developing the most user-friendly and user-accessible Earth modeling system in the world. This marks the end of a two-year planning process to establish the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC), and an exciting starting point for community members from academia, industry and government to work together to … Read More
Director's Corner: Participating in Research-to-Operations process through the DTC
Michael Toy
Autumn 2021 | The DTC plays a vital role in the development of the Unified Forecast System (UFS), particularly in the areas of physics parameterization development, and testing and evaluation (T&E). In these ways, the DTC is facilitating research to operations (R2O) efforts from a broad scientific community. Recently, I became a member of this community as a model-physics parameterization developer, … Read More
Who's Who: Ka Yee Wong
Autumn 2021 | Ka Yee Wong was born in Hong Kong, the British colony once known as “The Pearl of the East,'' before the 1997 handover to China from the British government. She grew up in a large family, the fifth of six children (four sisters and a brother). Ka Yee was very active in school sports, shining as the only girl who played competitive ping pong and basketball with the boys. As a child, Ka Yee loved exploring the outside world, especially gazing up at the sky. In her words she “loved… Read More
Bridges to Operations: Highlights of the 2021 NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed Spring Forecasting Experiment
Autumn 2021 | Although the COVID pandemic has precluded in-person experiments for nearly two years in NOAA’s Hazardous Weather Testbed, virtual Spring Forecasting Experiments (SFEs) have proven to be an effective way to maintain momentum in key research-to-operations activities. SFEs are annual, 5-week severe-weather forecasting experiments led by NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center and National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma. After pivoting to a virtual format for SFE 2020, which limited… Read More
Visitors: Cloud Overlap Enhancements Adopted for HWRF Operations
Visitors: Michael Iacono and John Henderson
Autumn 2021 | During their recent project for the DTC Visitor Program, 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 to represent the sub-grid variability and vertical overlap of partial cloudiness within the calculation of atmospheric radiative transfer. Their exponential-random (ER) cloud overlap advancement was adopted by NOAA in the 2020 operational HWRF. … Read More
Community Connections: Introducing the Unified Forecast System Case Studies Platform
Autumn 2021 | The Unified Forecast System (UFS) Case Studies platform offers resources for conducting case studies that represent the evolving forecast challenges of NOAA’s operational Global Forecast System (GFS). This platform is the outcome of a DTC project funded by the 2019 Disaster Related Appropriation… Read More
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