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 in… Read More

Autumn 2014 | An old management adage says that if you need some new task done NOW, ask someone who is already busy. Although she probably cringes to hear it, this applies well to Tara, with an exception: she would first offer to take it on. Her tireless approach to work follows pretty directly from a commitment to accept new challenges in new places. In practice, it has led to twists and turns along the way. After completing her Master’s degree at Colorado State University in aerosol/cloud interactions in marine stratus, her graduate… Read More

Autumn 2014 | Researchers from the DTC plan to provide numerical model runs from a preliminary version of the North American Rapid Refresh Ensemble system (Pre-NARRE) to the Hydrometeorological Testbed of the Weather Prediction Center (HMT/ WPC) during their current Winter Exercise. The DTC Ensemble Task will run the ensemble system (most likely on the NOAA hjet computing system) and post-process some of the results for HMT/WPC. Members of the ensemble (eight in total) will be produced from both WRF/ RUC and NMMB dynamical cores, and will… Read More

Autumn 2014 | The DTC hosted the 5th Community Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) Tutorial on July 14-16 of this summer at the NCAR Foothills Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. One of several outreach events sponsored recently by the DTC, this tutorial was held in collaboration with other major GSI development teams from around the United States. With an ultimate goal of providing operational capabilities to the research community, this series of tutorials has become a primary training resource whereby both operational and research… Read More

Autumn 2014 | Announcements, Publications and More VISITOR PROJECT AWARDS Paul Roebber (Univ of Wisconsin - Milwaukee):Demonstration Project: Development of a Large Member Ensemble Forecast System for Heavy Rainfall using Evolutionary Programming. WORKSHOPS, TUTORIALS, EVENTS Physics Workshop The DTC and NOAA will convene a workshop entitled ‘Parameterization of moist process for next-generation numerical weather prediction models… Read More

Autumn 2014 | As modifications and additions are made to WRF code and released to the community, users often ask, “Is WRF really improving?”

Autumn 2014 | During my first 15 months as the ESRL Global Systems Division Director, I have learned about the DTC and its role in the modeling community. The DTC has made remarkable gains in supporting the WRF model within the community that has contributed to the great success and usage of the model both nationally and internationally. I believe the DTC is unique in how it is funded and operated as a joint effort between NCAR and NOAA, along with partners from the Air Force. It is my observation that there is a significant effort to… Read More

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

Summer 2013 | Dear Colleagues, The end-to-end modeling systems in the NOAA operational numerical guidance suite are scientifically based, and research results must and do cross the “Valley of Death” into operations. However, the operational and research communities need to make this journey more efficient and cost effective. That’s one reason why we have testbeds like the DTC. During 20 years as a research scientist at NASA, I had the opportunity to work closely with… Read More

Summer 2013 |

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 the… 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

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.

Spring 2013 | The DTC provides a common framework for researchers to demonstrate the merits of new developments through the Mesoscale Model Evaluation Testbed (MMET). Established in the Fall of 2012, MMET provides initialization and observation data sets for several case studies and week-long extended periods that can be used by the entire numerical weather prediction (NWP) community for testing and evaluation. The MMET data sets also include baseline results generated by the DTC… Read More

Spring 2013 | Welcome to the first issue of a quarterly newsletter for the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC). The research to operations (R2O) transition in numerical weather prediction (NWP) is a major challenge facing the U.S. meteorological community. It has been recognized that the U.S. has the largest community around the world working on weather research and numerical modeling. Yet, most of these research results do not directly benefit operational NWP. The DTC was established in 2003 with a mission to facilitate… Read More