NAEFS System Upgrade and Its New Products

North American Ensemble Forecast System (NAEFS) is an ensemble weather prediction system run jointly by Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) and National Weather Service (NWS). It generates probabilistic products four times per day for North America, Alaska and the globe for up to 2 weeks in advance. The generation and improvement of NAEFS probabilistic guidance are maintained and continuously enhanced through the developments of NAEFS statistical post-processing (SPP) system.

This NAEFS upgrade include high resolution (0.5*0.5 degree) GEFS/NAEFS data exchange between MSC and NWS, every 3 hours for 0-8 days, then 6 hours out to 16 days, as per NAEFS/NUOPC agreement. The NAEFS SPP upgrade include: (1) the hybrid method of decaying bias and reforecast bias is applied into the operational system, (2) bias correction for 10 meter wind speed is included as user request, (3) precipitation downscaled product is added, and (4) extreme forecast index (EFI), a new product, is generated for 4 variables, 2 meter temperature, 10 meter wind speed, mean sea level pressure and precipitation.