Model Testing and Evaluation at the DTC in Support of R2O in NWP

The primary mission of the Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) is to facilitate the transition from research to operations in numerical weather prediction. To fulfill this mission, the DTC (i) provides user support for the community Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) systems, and (ii) performs testing and evaluation of modeling systems or their components to support research and operation communities. Currently, the DTC focuses its activities in five task areas: mesoscale modeling, data assimilation, hurricane, ensemble and verification. In collaboration with the Mesocale and Microscale Meteorology (MMM) Division of NCAR and the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), the DTC has provided support for the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) modeling system, the WRF for Hurricanes (HWRF) model, the Grid-point Statistical Interpolation (GSI) data assimilation model, and the Model Evaluation Tools (MET). In the area of model testing and evaluation, DTC has performed (a) WRF reference configuration testing, (b) evaluation of HWRF alternative physics, (c) testing of GSI ensemble hybrid data assimilation for hurricane prediction with HWRF, and (d) evaluating Short-Range Ensemble Forecast System (SREF) for Hydrometeorology Testbed (HMT). In this presentation, we will discuss highlights of the results from these recent testing and evaluation activities, and their relevance to the transition from research to operational NWP. We will also discuss the future direction of the DTC.