Status of the NOAA Fire Weather Testbed

With the increasing occurrence of wildfires threatening and affecting society, NOAA has increased its strategic investments and planning to address wildfire-related hazards. One important aspect of this is the establishment of a new NOAA Fire Weather Testbed (FWT). This FWT has been designed to bring together the wildfire communities including decision makers, researchers, and operational fire weather forecasters to improve and tailor tools, applications, products, and information. The FWT will work closely with other NOAA Testbeds and Proving Grounds to facilitate various evaluation and transitional fire weather-related activities, and is a joint effort between three of NOAA’s Line Offices: NOAA Research, National Weather Service, and National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service.

This presentation will provide an update to the status of the infrastructure, staffing, and planned execution of the FWT. Housed within NOAA’s Global Systems Lab in Boulder, Colorado, the FWT will consist of physical and virtual facilities for conducting evaluations and experiments, with a heavy reliance on cloud computing resources and methods.