NOAA's hourly-updated 3km HRRR and RUC/Rapid Refresh - recent (2010) and upcoming changes toward improving weather guidance for air-traffic management

NOAA's hourly-updated 3-km High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR), run experimentally at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory, has become a cornerstone for FAA's experimental ATM demonstrations and for the multi-agency Consolidated Storm Prediction for Aviation (CoSPA). A major 2010 demonstration has allowed closer scrutiny of HRRR (and related CoSPA) forecasts by developers within NOAA/ESRL, scientific collaborators at NCAR and MIT/LL, and by ATM users.

In this paper, we will summarize recent modifications to radar and cloud/hydrometeor components of the data assimilation run in the 13km RUC (and upcoming Rapid Refresh) by which the HRRR is initialized every hour. Detailed 2010 HRRR verification results will be presented. We will also describe HRRR redesign (both in radar data assimilation and model configuration) for 2011 ATM-related experiments based on 2010 results.

Finally, we will also provide an update to likely improvements to NOAA modeling capabilities over the 2012-2020 period, including: - ensemble-based RR: North American Rapid Refresh Ensemble (NARRE) with ARW and NMM components by 2013 (6 members) - hourly updated global model forecast information after NextGen MOC (Midterm Operating Capability) - ensemble-based HRRR forecasts (HRRRE, with NARRE-based initial conditions after 2015 - improved data assimilation using ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) and/or 4-d variational (4dVAR) techniques - addition of inline chemistry to improve visibility, cloud, and precipitation forecasts for aviation (e.g., RR-Chem, HRRR-chem) - ensemble-based post-processing for aviation uncertainty/probability forecasts