Integrating Weather Modeling Capabilities for the Air Force Weather Agency: Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC)

The United States Air Force is moving toward the provision of integrated 'Mud to Sun' weather forecasting to support warfighter tactical and strategic decision making. This includes both terrestrial and space weather forecasting. Currently TRW in conjunction with Harris Corporation, IBM and Mission Research Corporation (MRC) operates the Air Force's Global Theater Weather Analysis and Prediction System (GTWAPS). This system is primarily used for terrestrial weather forecasting, the Air Force is also taking advantage of its processing capabilities to support space weather research by providing a processing facility for the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC). In addition to being responsible for the CCMC hardware platform, TRW is also developing a prototype graphical user interface (GUI) to control CCMC modeling. The CCMC is to provide an integrated approach to space weather modeling from basic research through prototyping to warfighter support. CCMC was developed based on the needs of the operations and science community, designed to bridge the gap between the two, and provide an opportunity for Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) to support development of the next generation of science and forecasting tools for space weather. It will operate within the AFWA facility at Offutt AFB, NE, and will store its outputs on local storage for retrieval by users at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Maryland. By hosting CCMC on the same platform as other weather models the Air Force hopes to be able to inject new modeling technology faster was well as improve the synergy between the research and operational communities. This paper describes GTWAPS and other TRW support for CCMC. The paper also describes the goals for synergy of space and terrestrial weather forecasting capability.