Operational Global Tropical Cyclone Forecasts from NOAA: Implementation of 2km Resolution HWRF Modeling System for 2015 with Support from HFIP

In the past few years, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) operational high-resolution Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast (HWRF) modeling system has shown significant improvements in the track, intensity, structure, size, and rainfall forecasts, supporting the National Hurricane Center (NHC) and the Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) by providing more skillful numerical guidance for operational hurricane forecasts.  With the support from NOAA's Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP), the HWRF team at NCEP's Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) have expanded the scope of the HWRF model for all tropical oceanic basins of the world by providing experimental real-time forecast guidance to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC), evolving HWRF into a unique regional model with global coverage. JTWC has been using the HWRF model guidance in their operations, providing more skillful track and intensity forecasts for all tropical cyclones in the world. Through extensive international collaborations, several operational centers in the Asia-Pacific and South Asian regions have adopted HWRF model for their forecast and research applications.

This presentation will highlight the performance of the operational HWRF for tropical cyclones of all ocean basins in 2014, with special emphasis on track and intensity forecasts for a few major landfalling tropical cyclones.

Starting with the 2015 hurricane season, HWRF modeling system will be upgraded to run at 2km resolution near the storm region with advanced physics improvements, and for the first time, a 40-member high-resolution HWRF ensembles based data assimilation methodology will be implemented to assimilate real-time NOAA P3 Tail Doppler Radar Data in the inner core regions of the hurricane. In addition, a major advancement to the NCEP operational HWRF includes providing forecast guidance operationally for all global tropical cyclones throughout the year in support of NHC, JTWC, CPHC and National Weather Service (NWS) Pacific Region (PR). The recent model advancements and future plans to meet the next generation forecaster needs for improved tropical cyclone products will be discussed in the context of NOAA's Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project.

Improvements in predicting the rapid intensity changes, development of advanced inner core data assimilation techniques and application of scale-aware and stochastic physics remain as the high priority area of research. High-resolution ensembles and global-to-local scale modeling efforts are going to define the future generation tropical cyclone forecasting tools to meet the operational requirements.