Improving NOAA’s Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System: HAFSv2 Upgrades and Operational Implementation

After multiple years of accelerated developments and collaborative efforts among research and operational communities, NOAA’s first operational version of the Unified Forecast System (UFS) based hurricane prediction system, version-1 of Hurricane Forecast and Analysis System (HAFSv1), was implemented on June 27, 2023.

Yearly upgrades for HAFS are planned to ensure that the state of the art science and technology are implemented operationally, and the hurricane forecast skills are continuously improved. Targeting model upgrades for HAFSv2 in 2024, experiments with two HAFS configurations were conducted in real-time demonstration in 2023 Atlantic hurricane season, under the auspices of the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP). Both configurations aimed at addressing the issues identified in HAFSv1 performance during the 2023 hurricane season, and serve as the baselines for HAFSv2 upgrades.

In this presentation, two final configurations of HAFSv2 upgrades, which include increase of model resolution, relocation of hydrometeor variables during vortex initialization, coupling with the MOM6 ocean model, and further improvement of model physics schemes, will be presented and discussed. Three year retrospective results (2021-2023) based on HAFSv2 will be evaluated, analyzed, and compared with the results from HAFSv1.