Status, Advancements and Future Challenges of NCEP High-Resolution Tropical Cyclone Forecast Model (HWRF) for Operational Needs: An R2O Perspective

In the past few years, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) operational Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast (HWRF) modeling system has become one of the best hurricane forecasting models.  With the support from NOAA's Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project (HFIP), the HWRF team at NCEP's Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) have expanded the scope of the HWRF model for all tropical oceanic basins of the world, evolving HWRF into a unique regional model with global coverage, providing more skillful real-time track and intensity forecast guidance for all tropical cyclones in the world through NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) and Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC), and US Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC). The operational HWRF modeling system is also being supported to the research community through NOAA's Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) for academic research and advanced model development for operational needs.  Through extensive international collaborations, several operational centers in the Asia-Pacific and South Asian regions have adopted HWRF model for their forecast and research needs.

This presentation will focus on describing the performance of the operational HWRF for tropical cyclones of all ocean basins in 2014. Significant advancements to the HWRF modeling system have been made possible through focused research and developmental efforts, systematic testing and evaluation, and this presentation will highlight the efficient mechanism established for research transitioning to operations (R2O) through support from HFIP.

Efforts for further advancements to the HWRF modeling system for improved tropical cyclone prediction capabilities will be presented. Improvements in predicting the rapid intensity changes remain as the high priority area of research done in collaboration with several NOAA agencies, international operational centers and academic partners. High-resolution ensembles and global-to-local scale modeling efforts are going to define the future generation tropical cyclone forecasting tools to meet the operational requirements.