Developing Fruitful Community Collaborations in Operational Model Development: Discussion and Guidelines in the Context of the UFS-R2O Project

The Unified Forecast System (UFS) is a community-based, coupled Earth system model that supports NOAA’s operational forecasting capabilities, in addition to providing a state-of-the-art community modeling system for research applications. With the introduction of the UFS, operational model development at NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) is becoming increasingly an open and collaborative effort with ongoing participation from multiple NOAA labs, national agencies and academic groups.

The Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI) Modeling Program within the NWS supports a number of efforts toward improving and modernizing the operational modeling suite and forecast products at the NWS, the majority of which is carried out through the UFS - Research to Operations (-R2O) Project. The Weather Program Office (WPO) within NOAA Office of Atmospheric Research (OAR) works closely with NWS to help develop and transition weather research, selects and funds research that supports and fosters collaborations within NOAA’s research laboratories and across the weather enterprise. The UFS-R2O project, jointly supported by the OSTI and WPO focuses on integration of high Readiness Level (RL) innovations into future operational systems at the National Centers for Environmental Predictions (NCEP), aligning priorities captured from stakeholder needs with development activities and implementation timelines. Therefore, these activities distributed across multiple projects require continued collaboration with operational model developers and evaluators throughout their performing periods. These R2O collaborations run smoothly and effectively only when non-NWS participants are familiar with operational terms and processes such as Readiness Levels (RLs), Transition to Operations (T2O) requirements and timelines, operational modeling suite and its upstream and downstream dependencies and software and technical compliances. For example, NOAA RLs refer to the maturity of a research contribution w.r.t to operational implementation, where RL 1 represents basic research and 9 represents systems that are operationally implemented. The OSTI Modeling Program typically encourages projects starting around RL 5 or higher. Additionally, NWS forecasters are key stakeholders and customers of the operational models and forecasters’ concerns are key drivers in model development.

This presentation will provide an overview of the framework for community collaboration that is currently in place as part of the UFS-R2O Project, discuss requirements and expectations from the operational environment, and provide guidelines for existing and potential collaborators from research and academia.