Development of a Model Blending Capability for the United States Air Force

The United States Air Force (USAF) is investigating model blending to enhance their numerical weather prediction (NWP) capabilities. The blending of deterministic and ensemble NWP model outputs together provides both probabilistic and deterministic forecasts that exploit the vast quantities of NWP data available, yielding a unified forecast product that can be easily digested by end users for decision making. This mitigates a common issue of ensemble NWP models being underutilized by forecasters, and also reduces the bandwidth requirements to data delivery.

Building upon the USAF partnership with the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office (Met Office), MIT Lincoln Laboratory has begun adapting the open-source Integrated Model post-PROcessing and Verification (IMPROVER) software developed by the Met Office for USAF applications. The IMPROVER software is modular and can be used to set up a customizable post-processing system capable of performing a variety of steps including physical corrections for downscaling, spatial neighborhooding, calibration, and model blending. To adapt IMPROVER for the USAF, additional development was required including adding the capability of models used by the USAF to be ingested into IMPROVER, establishment of post-processing chains for several near-surface diagnostics, and the creation of a new lightning IMPROVER module given the importance of deep convection to aviation. A discussion of this work to establish a blended forecast over a global domain will be presented, including tradeoffs in how the post-processing procedures are applied, verification of the forecasts, and the next steps to adapt IMPROVER for the USAF ultimately for real-time operational use.

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This material is based upon work supported by the Department of the Air Force under Air Force Contract No. FA8702-15-D-0001. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of the Air Force.