On a Collaborative Forecast Process in the U.S. National Weather Service

On a Collaborative Forecast Process in the United States National Weather Service

J.J. Brost

Douglas Young

Steven Piltz

National Weather Service Program Management Office

National Weather Service Headquarters - Silver Spring, MD

With the expanding capability to produce and communicate high-resolution georeferenced data within the various domains of the National Weather Service (NWS), there is an urgent need to better define the forecast process. For the past four years, the Program Management Office of the NWS has been exploring what is referred to as the “Collaborative Forecast Process (CFP).” A goal of the CFP is to leverage expertise at all levels of the agency to produce forecast data that is consistent in space, time, and scale--without loss of skill.

In the Fall of 2018, a tabletop exercise was performed to map the workflow between the NWS’s Weather Prediction Center (WPC) and NWS Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) in the contiguous United States (CONUS) during the creation of a CONUS quantitative precipitation forecast (QPF). From this activity, a framework of attributes for a CFP demonstration was developed in the Spring of 2019. Technical requirements for this demonstration (e.g., dataflow), were tested in 2019. Concurrently, the National Blend of Models (NBM) Version 3.1 was meeting the established scientific criteria.

This talk explores the QPF CFP demonstration planned for 2020, which will test the ability of direct collaboration between WPC and the WFOs, while minimizing operational risk. The foundation of the demonstration will focus on a common starting point, common forecast tools, and a common platform that includes a situation awareness tool used to signal the need for collaboration. Roles, responsibilities, and deadlines that best meet needs related to Impact-based Decision Support Services (IDSS) will be defined.