Improving operational hurricane prediction with NCEP's Hurricane Weather and Research Forecast (HWRF) system: future advancements, community involvement and transition of research to operations through the Development Testbed Center (DTC)

The HWRF system became operational at NCEP for the 2007 hurricane season. Future plans to advance the HWRF system for continued improvement of track and for improving prediction of storm intensity, storm structure and coastal inundation are underway at NCEP and will be discussed. An integral part of this effort will require the involvement and close collaboration with the greater tropical/hurricane modeling community for accelerating the transition of research into NCEP operations. In support of this inaugural collaborative initiative, the DTC in Boulder in collaboration with NCEP/Environmental Modeling Center has been preparing the HWRF code for introduction into the WRF repository at NCAR.

This collaborative effort is also a joint venture with the MMM division at NCAR and in February 2010, EMC, MMM and the DTC will launch the first hurricane workshop and tutorial that will introduce both the HWRF and the Advanced Hurricane Research WRF (AHW) to the community. These activities will be discussed and a template for future collaborations between the research and operational communities will be presented.