Increasing Realism in NOAA's Probabilistic Global Predictions: Introducing Prognostic Aerosols in the Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS)

Recent efforts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Weather Service (NWS) have been focusing on increasing the realism of operational numerical weather prediction systems for global and regional applications. Through the adoption of the community-based Unified Forecast System (UFS) framework as the common development platform, Earth system model prototypes coupling atmosphere, land, ocean, sea ice, waves, and aerosols are being built and evaluated to provide the basis for the next generation of global prediction systems at the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC).

The addition of prognostic aerosols to each member of NOAA’s Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS) represents a significant step towards a more realistic description of the processes governing atmospheric composition and their impact on the atmosphere via aerosol radiative feedback. Prognostic aerosols are included in testing of GEFS (version 13) through the coupled UFS-Aerosols component, developed at EMC in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO). UFS-Aerosols embeds NASA’s 2nd-generation Goddard Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport (GOCART) model and incorporates updates to the dust scheme and anthropogenic and biogenic emissions from NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory (ARL), along with wildfire emissions provided by NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS).

Preliminary results from testing and evaluation of aerosol probabilistic distributions and radiative feedbacks in GEFS prototype simulations will be discussed.