NWP Goes to War…

Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) has gone to war in early 2005 in the back of specially equipped HMMWVs for the U. S. Army. Penn State and Smiths Detection teamed up to design, build and field the MMS-Profiler, an automated, relocatable mobile nowcast-prediction system to support Army field artillery operations. Building on the success of this system, with 45 units delivered/ordered and a total of 108 units planned, Smiths Detection, Penn State and other partners are designing and building a prototype nowcast-prediction system for the U. S. Marine Corps, planned for delivery early in 2008. Also built on a HMMWV platform, this mobile system, called the METMF(R) NEXGEN, will enable Marine Corps Operational Meteorologists to accurately analyze the environment and provide relevant mission impact assessments to battlefield commanders

The Profiler system will first be described, including its mesoscale-model nowcast capability and data assimilation system, and its unified post processor system (UPPS) used to further reduce model biases on the fly. Sample outputs and photos of its use in the battlefield will be shown. Then the NEXGEN system will be described, including its differences from Profiler in the use of its mesoscale-model nowcast component and its observation systems. These are truly innovative, state-of-the-science NWP and observation systems, which by virtue of their positioning on the battlefield, offer our military forces up-to-the-minute, high-resolution weather information for their special needs.