Spring 2019 | NCAR and NOAA are each adopting a unified approach to coupled environmental modeling, where success for both efforts is critically dependent on community contributions. At the end of January 2019, NCAR and NOAA signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to develop a shared infrastructure that encourages the broader community to engage in improving the Nation’s weather and climate modeling capabilities. Collaborating on the development of a common infrastructure will reduce duplication of effort and create common community… Read More
Director's Corner: The Operational FV3 Era
Clark Evans
Spring 2019 | We stand at the dawn of the operational FV3 era, representing the first step in the implementation of NOAA's Next-Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS). With this new era comes many challenges, but also many opportunities to work collaboratively to improve the operational modeling system. How can NOAA best work with the community to leverage these opportunities and develop a truly world-class weather and climate prediction system? A few ideas: Develop a decadal vision for world-class numerical weather prediction.… Read More
Who's Who: Gerard Ketefian
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
Visitors: Forecast Skill of the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) Model for Banded Snowfall Events
Visitor: Jacob Radford
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
Community Connections: Model Evaluation for Research Innovation Transition (MERIT)
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
Did you know?: There are Specialized Tools to Evaluate Innovations for NWP of TC's
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
Director's Corner: NOAA’s emerging effort in community modeling
Ricky Rood, University of Michigan
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.
Community Connections: The DTC helps the research community enhance the GSI/EnKF operational data assimilation system
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
Did you know?: The Next Generation Global Prediction System
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
Director's Corner: NOAA Embraces Community Modeling to Advance Weather Prediction
Brian Gross, Acting Director EMC
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.
Bridges to Operations: Tests Conducted at DTC Lead to Operational Implementation of Innovations in Physics and Data Assimilation in HWRF
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
Visitors: Impact of Vertical Advection Schemes of the Hydrometeors on the Simulated Hurricane Structure and Intensity
Visitor: Shaowu Bao
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
Community Connections: 2018 DTC Community Unified Forecast System Test Plans and Metrics Workshop
July 30 - August 1, 2018
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
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