Expansion and Enhancement of the Mesoscale Model Evaluation Testbed (MMET)

A wide range of NWP science innovations are under development in the research community that have the potential to positively impact operational numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) helps facilitate the transition of these new innovations from research to operations (R2O); however, with the extensive number of new techniques available in the research community, it is critical to clearly define a testing protocol in order to streamline the R2O process. The DTC has defined such a process that relies on shared responsibilities of the researchers, the DTC and operational centers to test promising new mesoscale modeling code. As part of this process, the DTC instituted the Mesoscale Model Evaluation Testbed (MMET) which established a common testing framework to assist the research community with demonstrating the merits of new developments.

MMET provides initialization and observation data sets for several case studies and week-long extended periods that can be used by the entire NWP community for testing and evaluation. Over the past year, the case list has been expanded to include additional events of interest to both the research and operational communities (e.g., atmospheric river events, mesoscale convective system). The DTC also utilized the MMET data sets to provide baseline results to the NWP community for select operational configurations that use both the Weather Research and Forecasting Advanced Research WRF (WRF-ARW) and Nonhydrostatic Multiscale Model on the B-grid (NMMB). These data sets can be used to compare against updated versions of the model or for testing sensitivities to different physical and dynamical configurations in order to progressively improve the forecast performance. This presentation will highlight the results from these types of comparisons as well show baseline results from the newly expanded case list.