Transitioning Research Unified Forecast System Applications to Operations

Working collaboratively with community partners, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) is leading the development of operational numerical prediction systems at the National Weather Service (NWS). EMC develops, transitions-to-operations and maintains numerical prediction systems for weather, ocean, climate, land surface and hydrology, hurricanes, and air quality for the U.S. and global domains. More than 20 EMC prediction systems are included in the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Production Suite, which is used by the NWS for protection of life and property and the enhancement of the economy, as well as by NOAA, other U.S. federal agencies, and various other stakeholders.

In order to unify and simplify its operational prediction suite of modeling systems, NOAA is transitioning to the Unified Forecast System (UFS) framework. The UFS is being developed as a community-based, comprehensive atmosphere-ocean-sea-ice-wave-aerosol-land coupled Earth modeling system with coupled data assimilation and ensemble capabilities, for environmental applications spanning from local to global domains and predictive time scales ranging from sub-hourly analyses to seasonal predictions. Unification of applications will consolidate NCEP’s Production Suite around a common set of scientific components and technical infrastructure. This streamlined suite is expected to accelerate the transition of research into operations and simplify maintenance of operational systems. The UFS Research to Operations (UFS R2O) project and several projects focused on better predictions for natural disasters have enabled focus on and maturing of capabilities for global, regional, hurricane and air quality applications.

Major development and operational implementation projects at EMC over the last couple of years are described including for example a new UFS-based hurricane application, a new air quality prediction system, recent advances in the use of satellite data, and a new verification system. We will present EMC plans for the next few years, within the overall NOAA strategy, and how planned efforts link with other modeling efforts within NOAA, in the broader U.S. and international community.