Scientists from the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory Hurricane Research Division are participating in the first Unified Forecast System (UFS) Users Workshop held virtually July 27-29, 2020.
UFS is a new Earth modeling system that is under active development to become NOAA’s main operational numerical weather prediction model. It is a single model that will make forecasts in local regions and across the globe, from short (half-hour) times to seasonal (3-month) predictions, and will forecast the atmosphere, ocean, and ice, as well as features like hurricanes, pollution, and dust storms.
The current Global Forecast System is NOAA’s first operational model under the UFS framework. For hurricanes, NOAA is actively developing the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS) under the guidance of the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program (HFIP) and the UFS Strategic Implementation Plan. HAFS will ultimately replace the current operational Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast (HWRF) system.
Andrew Hazelton discussed the performance of the HAFS that HRD ran in realtime during 2019, the latest improvement in HAFS, and the new configuration during the HFIP real-time demo during 2020. Xuejin Zhang reported on the status of the high-resolution grids that follow each tropical cyclone around the globe in HAFS. You can see the presentations by clicking on the title slides above.
AOML/HRD has been involved in much of the other work presented at the workshop. The goals of the workshop include informing attendees of recent development updates to the UFS, its capabilities, and how scientists can contribute to improvements.