NCEP: NWP in the era of common infrastructures WRF & ESMF

The era of common modeling infrastructures has begun at NCEP with its implementation on 21 September 2004 of two configurations of Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) in the HiResWindow slot of NCEP's operational modeling suite. This is just the beginning of a long line of implementations wherein a component of NCEP's operational modeling suite is replaced by a similar component configured in WRF. By the end of September 2005, the HiResWindow WRF Ensemble will be fully populated. The venerable Meso Eta Model and its data assimilation system will be replaced by WRF equivalents in March 2006. In 2007, the RUC will be replaced by the Rapid Refresh WRF and the GFDL hurricane model will be replaced by the Hurricane WRF. Finally, all members of the Short Range Ensemble Forecasting system will become WRF based in FY2008. Demonstrations of WRF, its capabilities and NCEP's progress towards the above milestones will be presented.

NCEP is also committed to become wholly compatible with the new Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF). This presents the opportunity for NCEP to put all its modeling (mesoscale, regional, global, coupled and climate) under one modeling system including data assimilation. NCEP's progress towards this goal will be presented.