Transition of research to operations for the Hurricane WRF model

The Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is used to provide operational numerical guidance to tropical storm forecasters at the National Hurricane Center. HWRF is a complex multi-component system, consisting of the WRF atmospheric model coupled to the Princeton Ocean Model for Tropical Cyclones (POM-TC), a sophisticated initialization package including a data assimilation system, and a set of postprocessing and vortex tracking tools.

HWRF's development is centralized at the Environmental Modeling Center of the National Weather Service but it incorporates contributions from a variety of scientists spread out over several governmental laboratories and academic institutions. This distributed development scenario poses significant challenges: a large number of scientists needs to learn how to use the model, operational and research codes need to stay synchronized to avoid development aging off, and promising new capabilities need to be tested for operational consideration. This presentation will focus on the services provided by the Developmental Testbed Center to support the integration of new developments onto the operational HWRF.