Evaluation of Large and Storm Scale Environment of the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS) Model Output

Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS) is a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model for Tropical Cyclone (TC) application under NOAA's Unified Forecast System (UFS) which includes storm-following telescopic moving nests, Data Assimilation (DA) with vortex initialization, and full three-way atmosphere-ocean-wave coupling framework. Physics parameterization schemes are an essential component of NWP models to simulate the behavior of TCs. TCs are complex phenomena that involve a large range of physical processes such as atmospheric dynamics, thermodynamics and cloud microphysics. There are several physical parameterization schemes that are available within the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP) suites. The HAFS model was tested with several physics configurations during the pre-implementation phase. Two operational configurations (HFSA and HFSB) of HAFSv1 went into operation in 2023 where the most notable difference is the Microphysics scheme. Two versions of HAFS were also tested in realtime where modifications (physics suites, resolution and other changes) were made to HFSA and HFSB. The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) is evaluating the outputs of the configurations. In this presentation we will evaluate how the outputs of the configurations perform in the large and storm scale environment. We will present results aggregated over the whole season as well as case studies for high impact storms. The verifications are conducted using the METplus verification package developed by the DTC.