This presentation will discuss and give examples of the ways that TBPGs are working to advance hazards forecasting, illustrated by specific examples from individual TBPGs or collaboration among them. These methods include first testing, evaluating, and refining the emerging innovations that are at the forefront of forecasting a spectrum of environmental threats, especially new probabilistic guidance and communication techniques. This includes the Climate TB’s work to extend UFS prototypes into ensembles to enable probabilistic forecasting, and the Coastal and Ocean Modeling TBs efforts to improve data assimilation algorithms for U.S. West & East coastal ocean forecast systems. Second, they assist developers in the design and development of products to communicate risk in order to advance actionable forecasts, outlooks, watches, and warnings. This includes translating hazards into impacts, optimizing watches/warnings, and facilitating social science studies to understand how these products are interpreted and communicated. Examples include the Hydrometeorology Testbed’s (HMT) work to enhance the Excessive Rainfall Outlook and the Satellite Proving Ground collaborations to develop a HRRR-Smoke Model with fully interactive smoke and weather variables for watches and warnings. Third, TBPGsy put innovations in front of NOAA forecasters and users, including emergency managers and broadcast meteorologists, to introduce new products and get feedback on their utility to support operations. For example, forecasters and others are involved in the experiments run by the Aviation Weather Testbed (AWT), Hazardous Weather Testbed (HWT), Space Weather Testbed (SWxTB), HMT, and the Hurricane and Ocean Testbed (HOT).
Finally, TBPGs provide feedback from operations and testing into research and research priorities; for example, the Developmental Testbed Center regularly iterates and provides feedback to research communities on issues with methods discovered during testing, which often results in research to solve those issues. The NWS Operations PG (OPG) tests systems, processes, and tools that will be used in NWS Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs), and evaluates what training may be needed before advances become used operationally in WFOs. TBPGs have worked collaboratively to demonstrate new tools, evaluate forecasting techniques, and understand the impact of mesoanalysis on forecast operations. For all of these, testing and evaluation are iterative, with innovations often going through several rounds of testing and refinement in experiments. Efforts are often collaborative between two or more TBPGs, for instance, HWT and OPG evaluated the collaborative forecast process (CFP) workflow for the new Warn-on-Forecast System, ProbSevere and Prob Tor. HMT and OPG worked together on evaluating the NWS Collaborative Forecast Process workflow for rainfall products.
TBPGs support the R2O process through working relationships for developmental testing, in quasi-operational frameworks among researchers and operational scientists/experts (measurement specialists, forecasters, IT specialists, etc.) including partners in academia, the private sector, and government agencies, aimed at solving operational problems or enhancing operations, in the context of user needs. TB activities are two-way interactions between developers and end users helping to facilitate both R2O and O2R, and are iterative, in which any particular project is generally tested multiple times and ways.
This presentation also will give an overview of this network and how it operates, some recent accomplishments, and upcoming challenges.
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