Summer 2013 | Robert Fovell and Travis Wilson from the University of California/Los Angeles recently completed a visitor project titled “Improvements to modeling persistent surface cold pools in WRF”, aspects of which will be part of Travis’ PhD work. Travis spent nine months working at the DTC in Boulder, much of the time with his DTC host Jamie Wolff, and Rob visited for two weeks in March and June. A principal motivation for their study was the occasionally poor prediction in numerical models (including in WRF) of… Read More

Summer 2014 | Tim Brown-DTC, Qingfu Liu-EMC, Yong Kwon-formerly of EMC, Ligia Bernardet-DTC, Vijay Tallapragada-EMC, and Sam Trahan-EMC some of the HWRF instructors, May 2014, Taipei, Taiwan.

Winter 2014 | One function of the DTC has been to archive and maintain important model-related code, and to make it available to operational and research segments of the meteorological community. As Laurie Carson describes it, the code maintenance and support function has important objectives in both O2R and R2O arenas: for the former, providing operational software to the research community, and for the latter, facilitating transfer of research capabilities to operational software packages. DTC’s approach is based… Read More

Summer 2013 | The Weather Prediction Center (WPC) at NCEP has been using MODE to supplement its traditional verification techniques since April 2010. The Method for Object-based Diagnostic Evaluation (MODE), a utility that is part of the MET verification package, has been developed with substantial support from the DTC. Both are systematically expanded and maintained for specific DTC tasks and an array of outside users. MODE output is available to WPC forecasters in real time through an internal website that displays… Read More

Winter 2014 | During California field exercises of the Hydrometeorological Testbed (HMT), a key objective has been to improve longer-range forecasts of so-called “atmospheric rivers” or ARs (narrow streams of mid- to low-level moisture) and other meteorological patterns that produce very heavy rainfall. During efforts to evaluate model forecasts for these exercises the DTC has explored methods that can provide more meaningful verification than standard scores. One such method represents regions of, say, precipitation… Read More

Summer 2013 | Through its Visitor Program, the DTC is currently working with Adam Clark, a scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS), on a project that involves using the Method for Object-based Diagnostic Evaluation – Time Domain (MODE-TD) for identification, tracking, and visualization of simulated supercells in high-resolution models, which will be applied and tested during annual NOAA/Hazardous Weather Testbed Spring Forecasting Experiments. … Read More

Spring 2013 | For several winter seasons, the DTC has worked with the Hydrometeorology Testbed (HMT) to develop effective verification techniques for ensemble forecasts of heavy winter precipitation associated with atmospheric rivers in California. For example, the performance diagram below displays the impact of model resolution. See additional HMT information and links on the DTC website. See http://www.dtcenter. org/eval/hmt/2012/.

Spring 2018 | The “Building a Weather-Ready Nation by Transitioning Academic Research to NOAA Operations” Workshop was held at the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Maryland, on November 1-2, 2017. NOAA and UCAR organized the meeting that drew more than one hundred participants from universities, government laboratories, operational centers, and the private sector. Members of the organizing committee included Reza Khanbilvardi, City College of New York, Chandra Kondragunta, NOAA/OAR, Jennifer Mahoney,… Read More

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

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

Summer 2015 | Over the years, the DTC has put in place several mechanisms to facilitate the use of operational models by the general community, mostly by supporting operational codes (for data assimilation, forecasting, postprocessing etc.) and organizing workshops and tutorials. By stimulating the use of operational codes by the research community, composed of universities, NCAR, and government laboratories, several new NWP developments have been transitioned to NCEP operations. However, in spite of the… Read More

Winter 2015 | The transition of research advances into operations (abbreviated as R2O), particularly those operations involving numerical weather prediction, satellite meteorology, and severe weather forecasting, has always been a major challenge for the atmospheric science community. With a preeminent mission to facilitate R2O in mind, NOAA and NCAR established the DTC in 2003. Since then, the DTC has worked toward this goal in three specific ways:  by providing community support for operational NWP systems, by performing… Read More

Autumn 2013 | As operational centers move inexorably toward ensemble-based probabilistic forecasting, the role of the DTC as a bridge between research and operations has expanded to include testing and evaluation of ensemble forecasting systems. In 2010 the ensemble task area in the DTC was designed with the ultimate goal of providing an environment in which extensive testing and evaluation of ensemble-related techniques developed by the NWP community could be conducted. Because these results should be immediately relevant… Read More

Spring 2018 | As chief of the Model Development Branch (MDB) at NOAA’s Global System Division (GSD), I am honored to work with many of the scientists from the DTC. The DTC has been a vital partner for the development, testing, and evaluation of the Rapid Refresh (RAP) and High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) models, and I look forward to continuing this valuable collaboration as the community works together to define and develop the next-generation modeling system.  The work performed in my branch at GSD is strongly linked to the five… Read More

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… Read More