NWP Prediction at ESRL/GSD: Overview of Global Modeling Development Activities

The Next Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS) is under development in the US. The high-stake goals of the NWS NGGPS require not only to generate a much-advanced global modeling system with state-of-the-art nonhydrostatic dynamics, physics and data assimilation, but also to foster much broader involvement of other labs and the academic community. While the initial objective for NGGPS was the selection of a dynamic core - in 2016 NOAA chose the FV3 dynamical core as a basis for its future global modeling system - other tasks now have increased importance. GSD’s Model Development Branch (MDB) is making further development of advanced physics parameterizations, aerosol and chemistry packages, and their applications in scales that range from storm scale to sub-seasonal and seasonal a high priority. The physics packages developed at ESRL includea unified scale-aware parameterization of subgrid cloudiness feedback to radiation (coupled PBL, microphysics, radiation, shallow convection) and the Grell-Freitas scale and aerosol aware convective parameterization.

Here we present a summary of ESRL/GSD’s global modeling efforts. We will include examples of how this work is successfully applied to the FV3GFS global model by ESRL/GSD for short and medium range NWP, air quality forecasting, and at sub-seasonal time scales. Important community contributions come from the Global Model Test Bed (GMTB), the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC), and NOAA’s Environmental Software Infrastructure and Interoperability (NESII) group.