A Decade of Antarctic Science Support through AMPS

The Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System (AMPS) effort has reached the 10-year milestone of serving Antarctic science. Since 2000, AMPS has provided real-time, high-resolution numerical weather prediction (NWP) over Antarctica and the high southern latitudes. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), AMPS has produced twice-daily mesoscale model guidance for the weather forecasters of the U.S. Antarctic Program. In addition to its core mission of serving NSF, the AMPS effort has reached out to provide a spectrum of products to forecasters and scientists of the international community in Antarctica.

Over the decade, AMPS has supported weather forecasting for a number of scientific field campaigns in the Antarctic, as well as on-Ice medevacs and other emergencies. It has also been a focus for research and development of model parameterizations tuned for the high latitudes. The AMPS archive of forecasts has been the basis of regional climatologies, meteorological case studies, and model performance evaluations. Over the years, the system has improved as its mesoscale models and computer hardware have advanced. The talk will review the decade of AMPS service and accomplishments. It will touch upon the future of mesoscale NWP over Antarctica, international relationships in Antarctic NWP, and issues in improving of Antarctic modeling.