A State-of-the-Art Regional OSSE Capability to Increase NOAA’s Capacity to Conduct Quantitative Observing System Assessments

The Quantitative Observing System Assessment Program (QOSAP) has begun building a regional OSSE system to further enhance NOAA’s state-of-the-art assessment capabilities for NOAA offices, labs, and programs. The regional OSSE system is based on the Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS). Severe weather over CONUS has been selected as the weather phenomenon to focus on. All steps used in conducting a global OSSE will be used for the regional OSSE. This includes generating a nature run, making synthetic observations (both existing and proposed), system calibration, data assimilation and forecast impact assessment. In this presentation, we will introduce a new high resolution regional nature run based on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and provide an update on the program’s plan for developing the regional OSSE capability.