Draft Requirements Developed for NWS’ Global Forecast Systems Based on Field’s Needs Collected from User Survey

The Analysis and Forecast Branch (AFS11) is tasked to address the field’s needs on Analysis and Forecasting by developing modeling requirements, including extended-range forecasting with global forecast systems.

The requirements development process involves a number of activities, including case evaluation, survey development, survey data analysis, and the generation of draft requirements. Representative cases of weather events depicting issues with global forecast systems were collected from various sources. Case solicitation and subsequent analysis was used to develop a field-survey to confirm the issues identified from the cases. The survey spanned topics ranging from general usage of the global forecast systems to specific weather systems such as tropical cyclones and winter storms to the accuracy of specific forecast parameters.

The case evaluation and survey development/analysis process sets the stage for the development of draft requirements. Initial draft requirements were developed, will be further refined by the end of FY24, and guide the creation of a final set of requirements during FY25. Final requirements will be submitted into the formal validation process under the NWS Governance for further consideration and implementation.

This presentation will provide some details of our user survey data and a draft form of requirements for global forecast systems. The strategy to develop requirements for global forecast systems will be presented in a companion paper (Kim et al.)