NOAA Upgrades the U.S. Global Weather Forecast Modelhttps://www.noaa.gov/media-release/noaa-upgrades-us-global-weather-forecast-model NOAA's flagship weather model—the Global Forecast System (GFS)—is undergoing a significant upgrade today to include a new dynamical core called the Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere (FV3). This upgrade will drive global numerical weather prediction into the future with improved forecasts of severe weather, winter storms, and tropical cyclone intensity and track.NOAA research scientists originally developed the FV3 as a tool to predict long-range weather patterns at time frames ranging from multiple decades to interannual, seasonal and subseasonal. In recent years, creators of the
FV3 at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory expanded it to also become the engine for NOAA's next-generation operational GFS.
The scientific and performance evaluation shows that the upgraded FV3-based GFS provides results equal to or better than the current global model in many measures. This upgrade establishes the foundation to further advancements in the future as we improve observation quality control, data assimilation, and the model physics.
"We are excited about the advancements enabled by the new GFS dynamical core and its prospects for the future," said Louis W. Uccellini, Ph.D., director, NOAA's National Weather Service. "Switching out the dynamical core will have significant impact on our ability to make more accurate 1-2 day forecasts and increase the level of accuracy for our 3-7 day forecasts. However, our job doesn't end there—we also have to improve the physics as well as the data assimilation system used to ingest data and initialize the model."
Operating a new and sophisticated weather model requires robust computing capacity. In January 2018, NOAA augmented its weather and climate supercomputing systems to increase performance by nearly 50 percent and added 60 percent more storage capacity to collect and process weather, water and climate observations. This increased capacity enabled the parallel testing of the FV3-based GFS throughout the year.
The retiring version of the model will no longer be used in operations but will continue to run in parallel through September 2019 to provide model users with data access and additional time to compare performance.-------------------------------
New Engine Is Driving NOAA’s Flagship Weather Forecast Modelhttps://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2465/New-engine-is-driving-NOAA%E2%80%99s-flagship-weather-forecast-model https://www.ncep.noaa.gov/