The non-hydrostatic, workstation version of the Eta atmospheric model has been implemented as the predictive part of NOAA's Local Analysis and Prediction System (LAPS) for southern New England. LAPS is one component of a real-time monitoring and modeling system to generate nowcasts and short-term forecasts of weather and ocean conditions for Narragansett Bay and adjacent coastal waters.

The workstation version of the Eta model was developed at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). It was configured over Southern New England with a 0.027 degrees (about 4 km) horizontal resolution grid and 38 sigma vertical levels. The model was modified to use a 30" resolution land-water mask instead of original 2' land-water mask. A comprehensive physics parameterization package is applied. The model is run on an SGI Origin 2000 workstation using up to 8 processors to generate 24 hour forecasts once a day with hourly resolution. For 6 processors' run the CPU time is about 2 hours 30 minutes. Calculated surface parameters (wind, temperature, sensible and latent heat fluxes, radiation and others) are used as surface boundary conditions for a numerical ocean prediction model for Narragansett Bay and adjacent waters. Hourly forecasts from the Eta model and the LAPS' analyses are displayed at http://ocean1.ncd.noaa.gov/NBLAPS.

A comparison of Eta model forecasts to observations from mesonets, radiosondes, and a boundary layer wind profiler is presented. The implementation of the Eta model for the watershed is funded by a National Oceanographic Partnership Program project involving the University of Rhode Island, Drexel and Brown Universities, and Applied Science Associates.