Development of NFIE forcing engine

In this study, the development of NFIE (national flood interoperability experiment) forcing engine is introduced. The system uses real-time, operational forcing from the NSSL (National Severe Storms Laboratory) Multi-Radar/Multi-sensor System (MRMS) rain gauge corrected radar QPE (quantitative precipitation estimation) product, NOAA/ESRL High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) output, and NCEP Global Forecast System (GFS) output to construct the forcing field for 3-km CONUS domain to drive the community WRF-Hydro model. The modeling system was spun up from September 2, 2013 through May 07, 2015 with NLDAS forcing. The forcing data engine and the WRF-Hydro modeling system were then forward executed in real-time to create national streamflow forecasts. Following a presentation of the overall software architecture of the forcing data engine, the impact of different combinations of the forcing field and possible downscaling methods are investigated. The presentation concludes with lessons-learned for an operational forcing data engine.