Navy global coupled numerical system development and field research contributing to the U.S. National Earth System Prediction Capability (ESPC) Partnership

The National Earth System Prediction Capability (ESPC) represents part of the U.S. response to this need for improved coordination of research towards more skillful and extended range operational environmental prediction. Synoptic/sub-seasonal to seasonal global earth system models are under development at several U.S. centers consisting of high-resolution atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, land, and near space components with the goal of seamless prediction at lead times from a few hours to months or years in operations by 2025. The National ESPC will address the scientific, technical, computational, and organizational challenges to meet this ambitious goal.

This presentation will describe Navy sponsored and Naval research in global coupled environmental numerical prediction model development and extended range predictability and prediction. The Naval Research Laboratory is developing a global fully coupled system including NAVGEM (atmosphere), HYCOM (ocean), CICE (sea ice), wave (WW 3) and land model (LIS) utilizing the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF). The near-term focus of the Navy ESPC demonstration and validation work includes high impact weather, S2S, and polar prediction efforts that are in line with the WWRP/THORPEX-WCRP HIWeather, S2S, and PPP goals. Recent simulation results from the prototype forecast system are compared to recent field project observations such as the 2011 Dynamics of the MJO (DYNAMO) period, as well as a dicussion of future process studies such as the Propagation of Intra-Seasonal Tropical Oscilations (PISTON).