HWRFV3.2 System: Transition of the High-Resolution, Research Version of HWRF to Operations

The Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) system was developed at NOAA's National Weather Services (NWS)/ NCEP to address the Nation's next generation hurricane forecast problems and became an operational track and intensity guidance tool in 2007. The model has been run routinely with a coarse grid resolution of about 27 km in the outer domain with a storm-following single moving nest at 9 km resolution. An Experimental version of the HWRF system was specifically adopted and developed at the Hurricane Research Division (HRD) of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) to study the intensity change problem at cloud-resolving scales (about 1-3 km). This modeling system is supported by NOAA's Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP) and complements the operational HWRF system. The merger of the NOAA research and operational efforts resulted in the development of HWRFV3.2 which is an ocean-coupled, triply nested, high-resolution operational and research system working at a fine horizontal grid resolution of 3 km. The triply nested HWRFV3.2 is the potential operational system starting from the 2012 hurricane season. This system was tested and verified for retrospective forecasts for 2008,2009 and 2010 seasons. The model was also run on experimental basis for the 2011 hurricane season.The initial results show promise. An overview of the system and the results from the verifications will be provided. We will specifically focus on the surface and boundary layer physics parameterization schemes which were advanced for the high resolution version of HWRF using flight level observations as the basis.