Unified Forecast System Research to Operations (UFS-R2O) Project Phase II: Status Update and Future Plans

The UFS-R2O Project, funded jointly by NOAA’s NWS Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI) and the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) Weather Program Office (WPO) for sustaining and advancing collaborations between the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Environmental Modelling Center, NOAA research labs, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), the Naval Research Lab (NRL) and universities and cooperative institutes, continued making accelerated progress during its second phase (2023-2026).

Transition of the Hurricane Application, the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System Version 2 (HAFSv2), into operations in July 2024 is a major accomplishment supported by this project in addition to enabling and executing HAFS Ensembles in Real-Time on Commercial Cloud (HERCv2) during the 2024 hurricane season. The Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS) for Convection Allowing Modeling/Short Range Weather (CAM/SRW) Application has made significant advancements but also exposed some major issues related to convective season performance, which allowed the Application Team to explore alternate options including switching to a different dynamical core (MPAS). Additionally, the project led the successful development, testing and evaluation of various prototypes (HR1-HR4, EP1-EP5) using the coupled UFS Medium Range Weather/Subseasonal to Seasonal (MRW/S2S) Application for upgrading the Global Forecast System (GFSv17) and Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFSv13) respectively. A new Seasonal Forecast Application Team has stood up for dedicated development of the next generation Seasonal Forecast System (SFS) that will replace the legacy Climate Forecast System (CFSv2) in operations.

This presentation will highlight the accomplishments of the UFS-R2O Project thus far, and will report on the current progress and future activities during the second phase of the project.