UFS-R2O at AMS Annual Meeting (January 2023)

UFS-R2O Project had a strong representation at the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), held at Denver, Colorado in January 2023. In addition a number of presentations by the team, the R2O hosted a special session co-chaired by Vijay Tallapragada and Fanglin Yang of NCEP Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) and a Town Hall Meeting organized by Yan Xue of the OSTI Modeling Program and Chandra Kondragunta of Weather Program Office (WPO). For an overview of current status of the project please see Town Hall Meeting slides here

UFS-R2O Town Hall at AGU Fall Meeting (December 2022)

The UFS-R2O Project had a successful Town Hall Meeting at the American Geophysical Society (AGU)’s Fall Meeting held at Chicago, IL in December 2022. The Town Hall was organized by Yan Xue of the OSTI Modeling Program and moderated by Maoyi Huang of Weather Program Office (WPO) and featured presentations by Avichal Mehra and Fanglin Yang (NCEP Environmental Modeling Center), Gregory Frost (NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory) and Yan Xue and Maoyi Huang.

DTC Announces METplus Version 5.0 (December 2022)

The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) announces the release of the enhanced Model Evaluation Tools (METplus) version 5.0 and Model Evaluation Tools (MET) version 11.0. METplus is a suite of Python wrappers and ancillary scripts that enhance the user’s ability to quickly set-up and run the Model Evaluation Tools (MET). METplus forms the unified verification framework for all UFS Applications. For more information on the latest versions see release notes here 

Marine re-analysis data (November 2021)

The NOAA UFS Marine Reanalysis, a global sea ice ocean coupled reanalysis product, is now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud storage platform; learn more

FY22 NWS Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI) Unified Forecast System (UFS) funding Opportunity (November 2021)

OSTI is soliciting research proposals that will advance the development of the community-based Unified Forecast System (UFS) through three competitions: 1) Next Generation Global Prediction System (NGGPS); 2) Weeks 3-4/S2S Program; and 3) Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP). This notification (see announcement on grants.gov) is valued at approximately $3,000,000 for the first year of multi-year (2 or 3 year) projects. For more detailed descriptions, please click here.

FY22 CSTAR/OSTI Notice of Funding Opportunities (September 2021)

Through the Collaborative Science, Technology, and Applied Research (CSTAR) Program, the NWS Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI) is soliciting proposals to conduct research and development activities. The CSTAR Program represents an NWS effort to create a cost-effective transition from basic and applied research to operations and services through collaborative research between operational forecasters and academic institutions which have expertise in the environmental, social and behavioral sciences, learn more...

FY22 WPO Notice of Funding Opportunities (August 2021)

NOAA’s Weather Program Office (WPO; formerly OWAQ, the Office of Weather and Air Quality) is soliciting proposals for weather, atmospheric composition, and earth system modeling and observations research, learn more...

FY22 CPO Notice of Funding Opportunities (July 2021)

The NOAA Climate Program Office (CPO) is pleased to announce the FY22 Climate Program Grants/Federal Funding Opportunities, learn more...

RRFS prototype on the AWS cloud (June 2021)

NOAA Rapid Refresh Refresh System (RRFS) Ensemble prototype is now available on the AWS cloud, learn more...

NWS Forecaster's Priorities (March 2021)

The Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI) Modeling Program Division in coordination with the OSTI Research to Operations (R2O) Program conducted three workshops during November 2020 to February 2021. The key outcome of the workshop is a finalized list of forecasters' priorities for the Unified Forecast System (UFS) Medium Range Weather/Sub-seasonal to Seasonal (MRW/S2S) and Short Range Weather (SRW) Applications that is expected to help shape the Modeling Program’s priorities as well as the UFS development goals. A report on the workshop can be found here.

NOAA Upgrades the U.S. Global Forecast Model (March 22, 2021)

NOAA has upgraded its Global Forecast System (GFS v16) weather model to boost weather forecasting capabilities across the U.S. These advancements include improvements to hurricane genesis forecasting, modeling for snowfall location, heavy rainfall forecasts, and overall model performance. Read more about the upgrade here.

DTC and NOAA Release a New Version of the Common Community Physics Package (3/10/2021)

DTC and NOAA released the Common Community Physics Package v5.0, with CCPP-physics, a parameterizations library, the CCPP-Framework and a single-column model. Full story.

UFS Global Coupled Model (GCM) prototype release (January 2021)

The Unified Forecast System Research to Operations (UFS-R2O) project announces the public release of reforecast data from the UFS atmosphere-ocean coupled model experimental prototype prototype 5 (UFS GCM p5). The data is made available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud storage platform. Read more

Highlights of the 2020 American Meteorological Society (AMS) Washington Forum (11/2020)

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) held its Annual Washington Forum virtually in October. The Forum discussed how modeling, the role of forecasters, and the types of information delivered to society will evolve in the future. Read More.

HFIP 2019 Annual Report (11/2020)

The Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP) has released its 2019 Annual Report highlighting achievements and the path towards the goals of further reducing track and intensity forecast errors by 20% within 5 years and to extend hurricane forecasts out to 7 days.

First Public Release of JEDI (October 2020)

JCSDA Announces the First Public Release of JEDI, the community-driven Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration.

UFS Evaluation Metrics Workshop survey (October 2020)

Take the UFS Evaluation Metrics Workshop survey to help us identify critical fields needed to assess skill in UFS apps.

Unified Forecast System Research-to-Operations (UFS-R2O) Project Proposal
This is a proposal to coordinate a large community of researchers, both inside and outside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to improve numerical weather and climate prediction by further developing and analyzing the Unified Forecast System (UFS), with the ultimate goal of improving the skill of NOAA’s operational forecast models

NOAA Upgrades the U.S. Global Forecast Model
On June 12, 2019, NOAA's Global Forecast System (GFS) had a significant upgrade to include the new dynamical core. This upgrade will drive global numerical weather prediction into the future with improved forecasts. Read more about the upgrade here.

NCAR-NOAA Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for Co-development of a Common Modeling Infrastructure (January 30, 2019)
This Memorandum of Agreement helps establish a new partnership to design a common modeling infrastructure that will be transparent and easy to access and use by public and private researchers, including academia and industry. By leveraging efficiencies and synergies, reducing duplication of effort, and creating shared model repositories, future research advances will more quickly benefit the public through better weather and climate forecasts.
Read more...

More Accuracy with less precision - assessing information content for reliable weather and climate prediction by Tim Palmer, (Royal Society Research Professor, University of Oxford)
The reasons for stochastic parmeterisation are reviewed.  From this, we conclude that conventional 64-bit floating-point representations in NWP and climate models are, for the most part, unnecessary and energetically profligate.  It is argued that a new start is needed for the development of Earth-System Models, based on the primacy of information content.