U.S. Air Force Global Weather Modeling: Status Update and Future Vision

The Global Air-Land Weather Exploitation Model (GALWEM), a unique instantiation of the U.K Met Office (UKMO) Unified Model developed in partnership between the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and the Met Office, was developed and transitioned to USAF operations in October 2015. While the current version of GALWEM is run on a high-performance computing (HPC) production system at the 557th Weather Wing, the USAF has recently solidified a new partnership with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) of the Department of Energy (DOE) for ORNL to acquire and host the USAF's next upgraded production HPC system, which is expected to provide >5 Petaflops of computing power and enable a leap forward for the USAF's capabilities for global and regional environmental modeling. This presentation will provide an update of current GALWEM operations, initial plans for our future operational system hosted at ORNL, and the future vision for USAF modeling in support of Department of Defense operational requirements and our contributions to the greater US federal weather enterprise.