The American Meteorological Society has announced that Dr. Jun Zhang, Dr. David S. Nolan, Dr. Robert F. Rogers, and Dr. Vijay S. Tallapragada have won the 2020 Banner I. Miller Award for their paper, “Evaluating the impact of improvements in the boundary layer parameterization on hurricane intensity and structure forecasts in HWRF,” which significantly advanced the prediction of hurricanes in an operational numerical weather prediction model. The award is given for an outstanding contribution to the science of hurricane and tropical weather forecasting published in a journal with international circulation during the 48 months prior to the deadline for nominations.
The paper looks at changes in what is happening in the atmosphere closest to the ocean surface and how that can change forecasts. NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft observations are compared to the Hurricane Weather Research and Forecast (HWRF) model forecasts. When differences between the model and the observations are found, the model is changed to greatly improve the forecasts. This technique can be used to make future versions of the model even better.
Important conclusions:
1. The differences between HWRF and NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft observations have been used to upgrade the model.
2. These upgrades led to large improvements in forecasts of where the hurricane will go and how strong it will be.
3. This technique can be used to make future forecast models even better.
Read the original paper at http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-14-00339.1.
Congratulations to Jun and Rob on this great honor.