Other Topics in Third Symposium On Community Modeling And Innovation (Invited Presentation)

The National Science Foundation’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences supports basic research on atmospheric processes. NSF helps to enable this research by funding the development and use of community numerical modeling tools. This presentation will outline the current status of community weather modeling support at NSF and recent updates to connections with the operational weather community.

Over the past 1-2 decades, academic research on fundamental processes in mesoscale meteorology has primarily made use of one numerical model, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The WRF model will continue to be available to the community, but the focus of future development in atmospheric modeling is transitioning to NCAR’s Model for Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) and NOAA’s Unified Forecast System (UFS). To allay concerns that the academic and operational research communities will continue to be partially siloed, these groups have been working together to enhance collaboration. NSF and NOAA held a roundtable discussion in 2022 to discuss a variety of connections between the agencies, and one outcome of that meeting was the development of a Dear Colleague Letter from NSF on modeling tools. This presentation will give an update on that effort.