Opportunities and Challenges in Community Unified Modeling for Operational Earth System Prediction

It has been a little over 8 years since the NGGPS decision was made to unify NWS modeling around an atmospheric dynamic core. Shortly thereafter the idea of the Unified Forecast System (UFS) was born, with full support from NOAA. This was a momentous occasion for community based Earth prediction system development in the United States. For the first time a major endeavor was underway to develop a fully coupled earth prediction system suitable for all applications ranging from short-term severe weather, to air quality, hurricanes, marine modeling, subseasonal to seasonal, and so on. During this time we have seen significant upgrades in our operational numerical weather prediction systems alongside a growing community of developers, researchers, students, and more. We have also faced challenges, from increasingly complex implementations to the need to explore a new atmospheric dynamical core. This talk will review and discuss the opportunities and challenges we have encountered in operational earth system prediction.