National Blend of Models: Early Results from a Field Demonstration

NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS) continues the development of iterative versions of the National Blend of Models (NBM) to create gridded forecast guidance to NWS National Centers and local Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs). At its end state, the NBM will produce a nationally consistent and skillful suite of calibrated forecast guidance from a blend of both NWS and non-NWS models for issuance of forecasts at NWS WFOs and National Centers.

The National Blend of Models Demonstration Team (NBMDT) was chartered in January, 2016 to serve as the services component to the NBM initiative. The NBMDT has been active in 2016, working towards its three objectives:
Successfully message the field demonstration, evaluation, and validation of the NBM; Prototype uses of the NBM and demonstrate potential concepts as a catalyst to achieve the Common Operating Picture as outlined in the Weather-Ready Nation Roadmap; and Serve as the nexus of services requirements.

In October, 2016, the NBMDT began evaluation of the first NBM demonstration project, which leverages a Regional initiative to simulate usage of the NBM, via an “NBM-proxy”, to explore potential uses of NBM within the forecast process. This presentation will outline early results from this demonstration project, and will also inform on NBMDT efforts to message the field demonstration, and ongoing efforts to evaluate and validate NBM Version 2.0.