WRF-based hurricane simulation in the Environmental Data Cube Support System

The Environmental Data Cube Support System (EDCSS) is an Air and Space Natural Environment (ASNE) Modeling and Simulation Executive Agent (MSEA) program to enable correlated environment representations in the US DoD Modeling and Simulation (M&S) community. To achieve consistency and support an array of components, the EDCSS leverages historical archives and operational forecast models to provide an integrated environment representation from which a full suite of products is produced. In the past year event planners have requested weather scenarios including passage of simulated hurricanes through specific areas of interest. To meet such requests, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model has been implemented with custom data assimilation methods which utilize synthetic observations to steer the scenario towards customer-defined requirements. The resulting WRF output provides a high-fidelity base resource from which the EDCSS may derive and subsequently distribute a wide-ranging suite of correlated products including simulated satellite and radar imagery, forecaster graphics, pre-computed sensor effects, synthetic observations and forecast messages, and simulated operational numerical weather forecasts. Product distribution is managed in real-time, and consumers include both human and machine participants. The WRF assimilation technique and EDCSS production process will be discussed as they were applied to recent modeling and simulation events.