The goal of this course is to familiarize participants with new tools for experimentation and development of physical parameterizations for Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP). Students will be exposed to the physics suites available through the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP), a library of physical parameterizations that is in use with NOAA’s Unified Forecast System. Supported suites include the operational GFS, the suite under development for the next operational GFS implementation, the suite used by the Rapid Refresh and High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (RAP/HRRR) models, and a suite developed under the auspices of a NOAA Climate Process Team.

In this course, the CCPP will be taught in conjunction with the CCPP single-column model, a simplified framework that enables experimentation in a controlled setting. Various research cases will be provided as forcing datasets for the single-column model, all originating from experimental field campaigns focused on specific meteorological phenomena, such as a DOE-ARM LASSO case focused on shallow convection and a TWP-ICE case focused on maritime deep convection. In addition to its conceptual simplicity, the single-column model is not computationally demanding and can be executed on computers readily available to graduate students or in the cloud. The CCPP and the CCPP single-column model are publicly released and supported community codes (https://dtcenter.org/ccpp/).