Under the Unified Forecast System’s Research to Operations Project, the development of NOAA’s next generation fully coupled global Earth System models includes innovations in physics, dynamics, coupling, and initial condition generation, which have been included in so-called “coupled prototypes” within the UFS in a stepwise manner. The Global Forecast System (GFSv17) and its ensemble counterpart, the Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFSv13) will be the first coupled global applications to become operational under the Unified Forecast System infrastructure. For atmospheric physics, incremental changes were introduced to the model physics during the prototype phases spanning from GFSv16 physics suite to the forthcoming GFSv17/GEFSv13 physics suite. GFSv17 is targeted for medium-range weather forecasts at 9-km horizontal grid-spacing. GEFSv13 is targeted for sub-seasonal forecasts at 25-km resolution. The model physics developed for GFSv17/GEFSv13 is also the starting point for the atmospheric component of the UFS Seasonal Forecast System (SFSv1), which will run for seasonal lead times at 50-km resolution, and the regional Air Quality Model (AQM) version 8.

The git-hub pull-requests listed below are to the UFS Weather Model. This repository consists of sub-modules hosting dynamics, physics, stochastic physics, ocean, ice, waves and aerosol components. The physics repository is called the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP) which is a submodule of the FV3 dycore and the UFS weather model.

Below we list the main updates to the GFSv17/GEFSv13 physics suite under the UFS coupled prototype development: