The Next Generation Global Prediction System

The new NWS Research to Operations Initiative has an overarching goal to design, develop, and implement the Next Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS). The current Global Forecast System (GFS) is the backbone of today's operation Numerical Weather Prediction suite. Over the next few years, NWS will upgrade its current operational Global Forecast System (GFS) to run operationally as a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice-wave-land-aerosol system The current GFS will most likely be retrofitted with a new dynamic core enabling enhanced operational performance along with the capability to scale efficiently to 10-100 K (or more) processors. The re-architected GFS software will expose and exploit orders of magnitude more thread and fine-grained parallelism, taking fullest possible advantage of the next-generation of High Performance Computing systems. This improvement, along with continued improvements to the GFS physics, data assimilation, system horizontal and vertical resolution as well as continued improvement to the other component forecast systems and software engineering will position the NWS to continue advancing the operational performance and associated skill of its current operational NWP skill to longer periods while remaining competitive with other international systems at shorter time periods. This undertaking is intended to advance the Nation's readiness and resilience to high impact weather events by improving accuracies and lead-times of forecasts. It can only succeed with the combined efforts of the broad weather community in the US, both Government and the private sector. This paper will outline our vision of the future NGGPS, describe the broad strategy needed to achieve a world-class operational Next Generation System and outline our approach to ensure the participation of the community.