The Interagency Council for Advancing Meteorological Services (ICAMS) Physics Interoperability Implementation Team (PIIT) activities

The Interagency Council for Advancing Meteorological Services (ICAMS) Physics Interoperability Implementation Team (PIIT) seeks to design community standards for physical parameterization interfaces and software frameworks (such as the Common Community Physics Package) that allow for efficient implementation in Earth system models (ESMs), which includes numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. The ICAMS PIIT helps to coordinate and stimulate the development of Earth-system physical parameterizations across the U.S. laboratories and federal agencies (e.g. NOAA, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, NCAR, NASA, DOE).

The ability to efficiently improve ESMs depends in part on the time it takes to get changes incorporated into those ESMs. As such, Hierarchical System Development (HSD) is an efficient way to effectively connect the various parts of the model development process. Via this systems-engineering approach, small components (i.e. physics schemes) from an ESM are tested first in isolation, then the components are progressively connected with increased coupling between ESM components at the different HSD steps. The overall system in HSD is end-to-end, i.e. it includes data ingest and QC, data assimilation, modeling, post-processing, and verification. HSD includes Single Column Models (SCMs; including individual physics schemes within a SCM), Small-Domain, Limited-Area and Regional Models, all the way to complex fully-coupled ESMs with interacting components for atmosphere/chemistry/aerosols, ocean/waves/sea-ice, land-hydrology/snow/land-ice, and biogeochemical cycles/ecosystems, a subset of which (i.e. atmosphere plus land and specified ocean conditions) has traditionally addressed NWP needs, though now several operational NWP systems are fully coupled from day zero.

ICAMS PIIT members meet monthly to discuss the latest developments at their institutes, with quasi-bi-monthly guest seminars from other operational centers and research institutes highlighting their model development processes (which often have HSD-like approaches). CCPP, the HSD approach, and examples of ICAMS PIIT efforts and that of our other national and international partners will be presented.