NOAA's Next Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS) Program Update

NOAA’s Next Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS) Program Update

Dorothy Koch¹, Hendrik Tolman¹, William Pryor², Farida Adimi², Sherrie Morris²

Abstract

The National Weather Service (NWS) Research to Operations (R2O) initiative to develop an advanced Next Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS) is accelerating model component development, including implementing a new dynamical core, advancing physics and data assimilation, as well as proceeding with model coupling. By improving the R2O transition, NGGPS has provided the foundation for the Unified Forecast System (UFS), a community-based, coupled Earth modeling system which serves as the source system for NOAA’s operational numerical weather prediction applications.

Model Development Teams/Working Groups, comprised of scientists and modelers from NOAA and across the community, are working together within the UFS to accelerate model component and system development. Development towards a single model includes integrating the new FV3 dynamical core into both global and regional atmospheric models, accelerating the evolution of model physics by implementing advances contained in the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP), developing data assimilation improvements by integrating improvements from the JCDSA JEDI project, and creating optimal verification methods and model evaluation tools (MET) to evaluate the performance of the coupled model. Enhanced coordination among partners is accelerating all efforts and integrating community development into testing at EMC and transition to operations.

By accelerating model development, implementing improved model coupling, utilizing NOAA’s new high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities, and advancing the processing of data, NGGPS contributed to the FV3-based GFS v15.1 implementation and subsequent code release. This presentation will highlight future plans, including the development of coupling capabilities for numerical ocean, wave, sea ice, land surface, aerosol and atmospheric composition models; next steps for data assimilation and ensemble design; post-processing and guidance products within the NOAA Environmental Modeling System (NEMS) and Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) infrastructure. Progress towards optimal unification and simplification of the full production suite of operational models will be discussed.

¹ NOAA, National Weather Service, Office of Science and Technology Integration

² Science and Technology Corporation