An update on USAF modeling and forecast initiatives (Invited Speaker)

The United States Air Force utilizes and employs a broad spectrum of capabilities to sense, characterize, and predict the current and future state of the atmosphere to prosecute the worldwide mission of the Air Force in support of DoD and National Objectives. A critical portion of this system is the numerical weather model intelligence developed, maintained, and provided by the 16th Weather Squadron (WS) in the 2nd Weather Group at the Air Force Weather Agency at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. This relatively small squadron of scientists and technicians is responsible for global and regional NWP guidance from the “mud to the sun” to all echelons of the DoD. They provide daily operations and development for numerical and statistical cloud models. Specialized modeling, such as land surface modeling, developed in coordination with NASA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, also provides intelligence to US Army decision-makers, as well as the US Department of Agriculture . This modeling is produced daily over virtually every landmass on the globe providing prognostic guidance to combatant command missions in the DoD. In addition to terrestrial modeling, the 16 WS supports DoD space weather situational awareness through integration of state-of-the-science space weather numerical models into operations and facilitates continuous improvement through ongoing interaction with the space science community. Future plans include operational implementation of a global and regional ensemble, direct coupling of our regional weather models with a new high-resolution land data assimilation system, high-resolution dust/aerosol forecasting, a solar flare patrol capability with H-alpha wavelength imaging, and GIS-enabled NWP information display via web services for customized on-the-fly visualizations.