Description:

The National Integrated Drought Information System Reauthorization Act of 2018 (NIDISRA) instructs NOAA to establish the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) Program as part of the Weather Program Office (WPO) to accelerate community-developed scientific and technological enhancements into the operational applications for numerical weather prediction (NWP). This Town Hall will highlight recent progress in the NOAA EPIC program to accelerate the transition of innovative research and development into operational NWP systems. EPIC has established a virtual web-based Community Portal (https://epic.noaa.gov) to support continuous integration and continuous development of the Unified Forecast System (UFS) weather model, the code base of the UFS Medium-Range Weather (MRW), Short-Range Weather (SRW), Hurricane, and Subseasonal to Seasonal (S2S) applications. EPIC hosts regular community engagement events and provides advanced user support to the UFS Community. EPIC also provides scientific innovation opportunities in partnership with other WPO programs, including the newly established WPO Student and Innovations Programs. Community members are invited to participate in order to understand how they can leverage EPIC in learning and performing research to advance the UFS, and to provide feedback on how the program can help better support the weather enterprise. A tentative agenda includes the following items: (1) NOAA OAR and NWS Leadership: Opening Remarks; (2) NOAA Modeling Board Leads: Context within NOAA Modeling Activities; (3) EPIC Team: Accelerate Transition of Model Advances from Innovations to Operations through EPIC; and (4) Panel Discussion.