US Air Force Modeling Capability at the 557th Weather Wing

The 557th Weather Wing (557 WW) maximizes America's military power through the exploitation of timely, accurate, and relevant weather information anywhere on the globe. We provide decision superiority to joint commanders to make the right decisions at the right time across the full spectrum of operations. This presentation will frame the unique challenges faced by the 557 WW in supporting a wide variety of operations. The successes and challenges of operationalizing the Global Air-Land Weather Exploitation Model (GALWEM), the US Air Force’s instantiation of the United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UKMO) Unified Model will be highlighted, including standing up independent data assimilation and global ensemble operations. We will discuss our current model verification operations as well as our vision to produce unparalleled, actionable verification of operationally-relevant variables to military operations. Tied to this effort, we are conducting ongoing dust forecasting verification studies and improvement projects in collaboration with the UKMO. In addition to the GALWEM, the 557 WW employs several specialized terrestrial models, including land surface, snow depth, cloud and volcanic ash modeling suites. This talk will highlight recent developments and future plans for these models. Additionally, monitoring and modeling the space environment to support DoD operations is a 557 WW function. This presentation will focus on recent operational advances in ionosphere modeling.