NOAA Climate Test Bed (CTB) Overview

NOAA/NCEP is the lead agency with responsibility for improving US operational climate predictions on time scales ranging from weeks to years. These predictions are aimed at enhancing our collective ability to understand and predict the state and evolution of the climate system on all time scales. The mission of the NCEP Climate Test Bed (CTB) is to accelerate the transition of research advances into improved NOAA/NCEP operational climate forecasts, products and applications on intra-seasonal to inter-annual time scales. The CTB facility is located at NCEP Climate Prediction Center (CPC) in the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, MD. CTB projects are carried out jointly by the NCEP scientists and scientists from the broader research community through competitive research projects sponsored by NOAA Climate Program Office.

This presentation will review the recent CTB progress towards its objectives and major contributions to the NCEP operational forecasts and products. Some selected highlights include i) development of Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) climate prediction system based on the major US and Canadian coupled climate models, ii) development of vision and strategy for the next generation of NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFS), iii) improvements in drought monitoring and outlook products, and iv) efforts to establish metrics and protocol for evaluating and transitioning experimental forecast tools and products to operations.

The NCEP/CTB looks forward to exchanging information and collaborating with other NOAA testbeds. More information on the NCEP CTB can be viewed at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/ctb/.