NCEP Update

“Where America’s Climate, Weather and Ocean Services Begin”

St. Louis Weather Forecast Office

October 5, 2005

Dr. Louis W. Uccellini

Director, National Centers for Environmental Prediction

Outline

• Define NCEP• Computing summary• Model Activity

– WRF

• Service Centers• Focus on HPC

– NDFD– Winter Weather Desk

• SREF

• Summary

Define NCEP

NCEP Supports the NOAA Seamless Suite of Climate Weather and Ocean Products

Mission: NCEP delivers analyses, guidance, forecasts and warnings for weather, ocean, climate, water, land surface and space weather to the nation and the world. NCEP provides science-based products and services through collaboration with partners and users to protect life and property, enhance the nation’s economy and support the nation’s growing need for environmental information.

Space Environment Center

Storm Prediction Center

Aviation Weather Center NCEP Central Operations Climate Prediction Center Environmental Modeling Center Hydrometeorological Prediction Center Ocean Prediction Center

Tropical Prediction Center

Vision: Striving to be America’s first choice, first alert and preferred partner for climate, weather and ocean prediction services.

Organization: Central component of NOAA National Weather Service

What Does NCEP Do?

Model Development, Implementation and Applications for Global and Regional Weather, Climate, Oceans and now Space WeatherInternational Partnerships in Ensemble ForecastsData Assimilation including the Joint Center for Satellite Data AssimilationSuper Computer, Workstation and Network Operations

“From the Sun to the Sea”

• Solar Monitoring, Warnings and Forecasts

• Climate Forecasts: Weekly to Seasonal to Interannual

• El Nino – La Nina Forecast

• Weather Forecasts to Day 7

• Hurricanes, Severe Weather, Snowstorms, Fire Weather

• Aviation (Turbulence, Icing)

• High Seas Forecasts and Warnings

Seamless Suite of Products

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Warnings & Alert Warnings & Alert CoordinationCoordination

WatchesWatches

ForecastsForecasts

Threats Assessments

GuidanceGuidance

OutlookOutlook

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Benefits

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Forecast Forecast UncertaintyUncertaintyForecast Forecast UncertaintyUncertainty

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NOAA Seamless Suite of ForecastProducts Spanning Climate and Weather

Weather Prediction Products

Climate PredictionProducts

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Computing Summary

Computing Capability

Commissioned/Operational IBM Supercomputer in Gaithersburg, MD (June 6, 2003)

$26.4M/Year $26.4M/Year InvestmentInvestment

•Receives Over 210 Million Global Observations Daily•Sustained Computational Speed: 1.485 Trillion Calculations/Sec•Generates More Than 5.7 Million Model Fields Each Day•Global Models (Weather, Ocean, Climate)•Regional Models (Aviation, Severe Weather, Fire Weather)•Hazards Models (Hurricane, Volcanic Ash, Dispersion)•3.2x upgrade operational on January 25, 2005•Backup in Fairmont, WV operational January 25, 2005

NCEP Production SuiteWeather, Ocean & Climate Forecast Systems

Version 3.0 April 9, 2004

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SREF GENS

Climate Forecast System

Product Generation Performance

Model Activity

2005 Implementations

•Weather

•Hurricane Model resolution increase 18 9 km

•Global Model resolution increase 55 35 km

•Rapid Update Cycle resolution increase 20 13 km

•Global Ensemble upgrade

•North American Meso-Scale upgrade

2005 Implementations (Cont.)

•Climate•Additional daily run of Climate Forecast System (from 1 2)

•First fully coupled global ocean/atmosphere model

•Air Quality•Expand Air Quality Forecast from Northeast U.S. to Eastern U.S.

FY2006 Activities•Ocean

•Wave Model•10 member Ensemble Wave model – Spring (06)

•Great Lakes Wave Forecast – Summer (06)

•Real-Time Ocean Forecast System (RTOFS)

• HYCOM-based, 1/12 degree North Atlantic Basin – Fall (05)

Chesapeake Bay

FY2006 Activities

•Global Forecast System (GFS) – Spring (06)•GSI data assimilation•Apply hybrid sigma-pressure coordinate model

•WRF – Spring (06) *•WRF based North America Mesoscale Run (Replaces Eta Model)

•GFDL Hurricane Model – Spring (06)•Begin parallel runs of Hurricane WRF system

GFS

CFS

GFDL

SREF

NAM - Eta

NOAH Land Surface Model

Dispersion

Air Quality

2005 NCEP Production Suite Atmospheric Model Dependencies

Forecast

GGSI

WRF-NMMWRF-ARWETARSM

L D A S

Sev Wx

WRF-NMMWRF-ARW

GENS

EDAS

RUC

WRF Implementation Schedule

• “HiResWindow” for Hazardous Weather: (ARW and NMM) Implemented operationally at NCEP on 6/28/05 (~5 km)

• WRF SREF members: Operational FY06 (1st Qtr)

• North American WRF: Operational in FY06 (3rd Qtr)

• WRF SREF: Fully Operational in FY07*

• Hurricane WRF: Operational in FY07*

• Rapid Refresh WRF: Operational in FY07*

• WRF Chem: Beyond FY08** As resources allow

GFS

CFS

HurricaneWRF

SREF

NAM - WRF

NOAH Land Surface Model

Dispersion

Chem WRF*Air Quality

2007 NCEP Production Suite Atmospheric Model Dependencies

Forecast

Rapid Refresh WRF

GGSI

RGSI

WRF-NMMWRF-ARWRSM ?

L D A S

Sev Wx

WRF-NMMWRF-ARW

*FY08

GENS

WRF in NAM

• Planned replacement of the Eta and its EDAS system with WRF-NMM and a WRF-GSI based NAM Data Assimilation System (NDAS) - March 2006

• WRF-NMM is the NMM put into WRF common modeling framework

• NMM represents an evolutionary change: – Nonhydrostatic dynamics (can be turned off)– Terrain following coordinate instead of step-mountains (this has

always been an option within the Eta code)– Tweaks / tunings to bring out “character” in QPF, etc.

• WRF product set is identical with same names (BUFR sounding files extended to 84 hours)

North American Mesoscale WRF

• Horizontal resolution to increase from 12 km to 10 km• Model top to move from 25 mb to 2 mb (will help with

assimilation of satellite radiances)• Levels stay at 60 – despite move of model top this is

enough because of the switch from step mountain to terrain following coordinate

• Eta 3D-VAR to be replaced by Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) – robust 3D-VAR scheme with no step mountains

• Will assimilate mesonets, GPS IPW, boundary layer Profilers and (hopefully) Level II radial velocity

• These are modest upgrade changes by previous standards

Fire Weather IMET Support

8 km NMM captures CA coastal windsGreen – model windsRed – observed winds

12 km NAM 8 km NMM

4 km WRF-EM (F25)

12 km NAM (F13)1h BREF (01Z)

4.5 km WRF-NMM (F25)

1h Tot Pcp

1h Tot Pcp1h Tot Pcp

Service Center Activities

• WAFS Significant Weather implemented in BUFR WAFS Significant Weather implemented in BUFR formatformat

• New Flight Path Tool implemented on ADDSNew Flight Path Tool implemented on ADDS• Dramatic improvement in number of Pilot Reports Dramatic improvement in number of Pilot Reports

filed through AWC webpagefiled through AWC webpage• Improvement in accuracy and usefulness of Improvement in accuracy and usefulness of

Collaborative Convective Forecast ProductsCollaborative Convective Forecast Products• Aviation thunderstorm advisory maps implemented Aviation thunderstorm advisory maps implemented

on NOAA websiteon NOAA website• Massive change to WMO headers of AWC productsMassive change to WMO headers of AWC products

Aviation Weather CenterAviation Weather Center

Climate Prediction Center

• Initiated Climate Test Bed infrastructure– Wayne Higgins –

Director

• CTB will accelerate the transfer of research and development into operational climate forecasts and products

Surface Analysis GFS 0600 UTC 03OCT2005

UWPBL4.1 Surface Analysis 0657 UTC 03OCT2005

12.5km QuikSCAT 0740 UTC 03October2005

GOES IR Satellite Image 0745UTC 03October2005

Ocean Prediction Center

• New automated technique developed by U of Wash using their boundary layer model to construct surface pressure analysis from Quikscat winds and available observations

GFS analysis U of Wash technique

Storm Prediction Center

• Now producing experimental 3-8 day graphical fire weather outlooks

• A short discussion will be added to the graphic when it becomes a Public Experimental Product (with PDD & comment period) in Spring 2006.

Tropical Prediction Center

• Experimental tropical cyclone surface wind speed probability– Tropical storm winds

(> 39 mph)

– > 58 mph winds

– Hurricane winds (>74 mph)

Space Environment Center• SEC formally joined NCEP/NWS/NOAA on January 9

– Their addition helps foster a seamless suite of operational products from the “Sun to the Sea”

• Provides space weather alerts and warnings for disturbances that can affect people and equipment working in space and on Earth

• Service/Science linkage offers many exciting challenges for future growth to insure the delivery of weather/ocean/climate products to a diverse and increasingly sophisticated user community.

Focus on HPC

Impact of Models on Day 1 Precipitation Scores

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HPC Forecasters Add Value

Models provide basis for improvement Correlations

Of HPC with:

Eta: 0.99GFS: 0.74NGM: 0.85

HPC/NDFD Highlights

• For decades HPC provided day 3 - 7 guidance– Max Temp, Min Temp, 24 hr

(later 12 hr) Pop, surface progs

• Spring 2004 - HPC asked to provide forecasts for additional fields including dew point, sky cover, wind direction and speed, and precipitation type

• HPC requested to deliver these forecasts as 5 km grids

• HPC began providing these fields in June 2004.

Methodology• HPC has 2 forecasters/shift preparing day 4 – 7 forecasts (one shift/day)

– One prepares surface progs and writes the narrative– Second prepares the max/min temperatures and PoPs

• HPC uses N-AWIPS to generate forecasts– Forecasters start with MOS max/min temps and MOS12 hr PoPs– Forecasters can edit 384 stations; usually edit ~ 20 - 25% of stations for a particular

forecast– Usually focus on areas they expect MOS to be deficient due to synoptic scale

considerations• No additional forecasters made available

– Additional fields increased the number of grids from 16 to 102• Only solution was to generate additional fields automatically• Basic philosophy is to generate a set of grids consistent with the manually generated forecasts

– Each additional field is generated from a manually prepared HPC product– Currently, these additional fields are not touched by a forecaster

Grid Production

• Max/min temperature grids are produced by interpolation of manually prepared point forecasts to a grid with Prism climatology as a background

• PoP grids are interpolated from HPC modified stations• Dew points use the HPC temperature forecasts and MOS

ensemble with Prism climatology as a background• Cloud cover is based on HPC PoPs and max temps• Winds are based on HPC surface progs• Precipitation type is based on HPC max/min temperature

forecasts and on PoPs (for aerial coverage)• WFOs provide input between “preliminary” and “final” product

release through 12Planet

Verification Results

• In general, HPC point forecasts are as good as or better than MOS and NDFD

• HPC winds are poorest of all HPC grids

• These results have been consistent from month to month

How HPC adds value to Day 4 - 7

• HPC shows 5 – 10% improvement over MOS

– Is this a good use of resources?

How HPC adds Value to Day 4 – 7 (Cont.)

• A “Big win” or “Big loss” occurs when HPC beats or looses to MOS by > 10 degrees.

• In those cases, HPC is better than MOS ~ 80 percent of the time (sample size ~ 35 - 40)

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ALL CASES TOP 10 EACHCATEGORY

MINMAXPOP

HPC BIG WIN VS BIG LOSS

PERCENTAGES COMPARED TO GFS MOS 2004

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Issues

• Time of release of forecasts

– Some WFOs want HPC to issued grids earlier

• HPC starts with MOS rather than previous forecast

– Field prefers less “flip-flopping”

• How involved do forecasters need to be?

– Are post-processed grids good enough?

• Should HPC provide probabilistic info?

– QPF – exceedance values

– Day 4 – 7 – ranges in addition to “best guess”

• How is collaborative approach sustained?

Future Plans• Continued improvement of methodology

– Better algorithms for post processed fields

• Faster processing of grids for earlier delivery

– Better hardware

– Optimize processing

• Expand coverage to OCONUS

• Explore other ways of creating sensible weather grids

– Greater use of ensembles to create grids from selected blend

– Forecasters focus on model selection and modification

Winter Weather

Goals of 4 year experiment from 2001- 2004: Improve Winter Weather Services to the public through

coordination of the winter weather watches/warnings with National guidance products

Test short range ensemble for their applications to winter weather forecasting

Motivation: Jan 24-25, 2000; December 30, 2000: March 4-6, 2001

WWD “operational” September 15, 2004

NWS Winter Weather Desk

Regional Stats

ER WWE1 (01-02’)

WWE2 (02-03’)

WWE3 (03-04’)

WWD (04-05’)

# WFOs 8 23 23 ALL

POD .89 .90 .92 .92

FAR .33 .30 .32 .30

CSI .62 .65 M .66

LT–Warn 13 15 18 21

To date NWS FY05 LT is 18h, 3h greater than GPRA goal of 15h

CR WWE2 (02-03’)

WWE3 (03-04’)

WWD* (04-05’)

# WFOs 8 33 ALL

POD .90 .88 .92

FAR .40 .45 .32

CSI .57 .51 .65

LT–Warn 13 13 17

WR NonWWE3 (03-04’)

WWE3 (03-04’)

WWD* (04-05’)

# WFOs 12 10 ALL

POD .86 .88 .88

FAR .26 .27 .30

CSI .66 .67 .64

LT–Warn 12 14 16

SR NonWWE3 (03-04’)

WWE3 (03-04’)

WWD (04-05’)

# WFOs 4 11 ALL

POD .84 .92 .90

FAR .37 .38 .39

CSI .57 .59 .57

LT–Warn 5 9 9

* Oct - Mar

NWS Winter Weather Desk

Time line: Sep 15 – April 1 Participants

NCEP HPC Provide SREF based Winter Wx guidance Coordinate with WFOs (Chat Room Technology)

WFOs All CONUS WFOs Use guidance from NCEP to produce coordinated Winter Storm Watches/Warnings

Products: http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/wwd/winter_wx.shtml 24 h probability (low, moderate, high) of meeting/exceeding 4”, 8”, 12”

snow, 0.25” freezing rain (for day 1, 2, 3) 72h Low tracks graphic and discussion

Summary

Summary• Strive to continue ongoing improvements

• Develop partnerships– JCSDA– WRF– NOAA Ocean Plan– ESMF

• Expand Collaborative Forecast Process: NCEP – RFC – WFO – CSWU

• Apply ensembles and forecaster input to probabilisitic forecast products

Cou

nt (

mill

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Daily Satellite Observation Count

2002

2003-4

2005

NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction

• Defined requirements for 268,762 RSF • Includes housing 800 Federal employees, contractors, and

visiting scientists • 5 NCEP Centers• NESDIS research and satellite

services• OAR Air Resources

Laboratory

• Begin move to new facility September ’07 and complete by Feb ‘08

Background Slides

Ops NAM

vs North

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NMM valid

18Z 10 July

2005

78-h

66-h

54-h

Ops NAM

vs North

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NMM valid

18Z 10 July

2005

42-h

30-h

18-h

Top: NAM, NMM 72h fcst valid 12z 7/17 w/TPC 5 day track issued 15z 7/14

Bottom: NAM, NMM 48h fcst valid 00z 7/20 w/TPC 3 day track issued 03z 7/18

Ops NAM NAM NMM

NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER ATLANTIC TRACK FORECAST ERRORS

NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER ATLANTIC TRACK FORECAST ERRORS

12 24 36 48 72 96 120

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