Updates from NOAA on GFS & Forecasting Techniques Upgrades

Earlier this month, the Environmental Modeling Center released the "Parallel GFS," the 13-km-out-to-240-hours Resolution Global Spectral Model that will become operational on December 9th. It's analysis is 16-km and has an improved physics package to account for it's ability to see mesoscale-alpha & some mesoscale-beta features (e.g. clusters of storms, squall lines, overnight MCCs & MCSs, tropical systems, possibly bands of snow in nor'easters). It's viewable at the link below:

The schedule for the roll-out of the rest of the upgrades is as follows (source: NWS Director Uccellini's interview on Wx Geeks, refined by a chat between myself & the EMC in early Oct.):

• Mid-to-Late Winter 2014-2015: Delivery of FY2015, Sandy-Relief-Pkg-funded Supercomputer
• Early-to-Mid Autumn 2015: Testing of current model suite on FY15 supercomputer complete.
• Mid-to-Late Autumn/ Dec. 2015: GFS will initialize using a hybrid of an Ensemble Kalman Filter and 4D-Variational scheme and full upgrade to the Physics package
• October 2016: Begin upgrading the downstream/ nested models, possibly modifying the current de-biasing method: Model Output Statistics

More weather prediction news:

1. This past Hurricane Season was the first in which the National Hurricane Center (NHC) used a five-day forecast (in addition to the 48-hour probabilities) in its Tropical Outlooks.
2. The High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) Model (a.k.a. the "Pirate Model"), a 3-km Grid-Point model initialized within the Rapid Refresh (RAP) model, is now operational.
3. The new Days 1, 2, and 3 convective outlooks published by the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) are now operational: "Marginal" replaces "See Text" and "Enhanced" replaces the so called "High-End Slight Risk" with "Slight Risk" probabilities now closer to "Climatology" (avg. # of severe wx days per year divided by 365 times 100%).
4. The 15% risk in the SPC's Day 4-8 Convective Outlook will be operational in mid-to-late December 2015.
5. Already set to receive data from these new weather satellites, NESDIS (NOAA's Satellite Division) - in conjunction with NASA, have announced that GOES-R (west) & GOES-S (east) will be launched in 2016 & 2018, replacing the current GOES-11 & GOES-13 satellites respectively. These new satellites have a longer-lasting back-up battery (for use during equinoxes) and can send data every 1-15 mins. for use in satellite loops and the new initialization scheme in our numerical models. They were originally set for launch in 2014 & 2016, but budget cuts delayed this.

My Thoughts:

This is a step in the right direction for the NWS, which may - once again - surpass the Europeans & Canadians for No. 1 in Numerical Model Prediction. In my opinion, however, a global spectral model having resolutions greater than 16-km for prediction may not be optimal because of the limitations of our understanding of the physics at higher resolutions. It may be more appropriate to use a series of nested grid models instead: 20-, 12-, 4-, and 1.33-km grids (as I said in my summer post). As for the forecasting techniques, this is a big step for NOAA equivalent to acknowledging (1) increased ability to predict weather at finer scales further out in time and (2) changes in communication infrastructure & understanding of the social sciences (psychology & sociology). I cannot wait until everything is in place in about five years.

Announcements from JBreezy Weather:

I conclude this entry with a few announcements:

1. My next post is on the 2014-2015 Winter Forecast and will be in-progress next week (first week in Nov.).
2. I will be posting 3-, 5-, 7-, and 10-day forecasts on Facebook & Twitter (@jbreezywx) at least twice per week.
3. Don't forget to move your clocks back one hour Saturday night and also change batteries in your smoke & carbon monoxide detectors.
4. Vote on Tuesday! While this blog is for weather, I will always encourage you to be a part of the political process that made these upgrades possible. It is expected to be a nice day Tuesday for JBreezy Weather's coverage area with highs in the mid-60s, so #NoExcuses - VOTE!
5. I will occasionally post video briefings (live broadcast) on Youtube (User: jbreezy101). My most recent one is the Severe Weather from the 12th through the 16th (posted 10/10).
6. I am also a weather commentator/ forecaster/ blogger on ShareAviation.com. My username is "JaronBreen" and I run the "Weather Help & Briefings" group.
7. On Wednesday, the National Weather Association (NWA) opens it's "Digital Seal" program. I will be pursuing this.

Have a great Halloween & start to November. Safe trick-or-treating and I'll see you here in about 7-10 days for the winter forecast. Tune in on Facebook & Twitter!!!

The State of the American Models

I have been posting my forecasts on Facebook & Twitter, honing my social media skills. I hope to post here more often as severe weather season ramps up to a July peak, and then the tropics enter their peak months of Aug. through Oct. For now, look on social media first as links to blog entries & videos (usually using Google Hangouts On Air) will be posted there. With that out of the way, I now take you back in time to the last two weeks of October 2012.

The date is October 19th, 2012. A disturbance in the Caribbean has just garnered the National Hurricane Center's (NHC) attention. The Canadian-run Model (CMC) is the first to develop it into a named storm, as it heads north. Thirty-six hours after the NHC starts watching it (at noon ET on 10/22), they classify it as Tropical Depression 18. At 5 PM, it becomes the 18th named storm of the season... Sandy. The European model forecasts Sandy to turn to the NW in about nine days. Meteorologists shrug it off... for now. At 11 AM Wed., the NHC classifies Sandy as a Hurricane as it nears Jamaica. A few hours later, the 12z run of the Euro comes in: this is the sixth consecutive run that it forecasts a left-hand turn past the SE coast. Meteorologists analyze the synoptic pattern and agree that the disturbance coming in from the Pacific NW and a blocking high developing over the Atlantic will turn Sandy to the left. However, the American-run Global Forecast System (GFS) & its ensembles (GEFS), along with just under half of the European models' ensembles, say that it will go out to sea. To better predict its track, the NWS, for the first or second time ever, orders an increase in the frequency of launches from all weather balloon stations in the entire US: from every 12 hours to every 6 hours. On the 25th, as Sandy emerges from Cuba, the GFS & GEFS start to show the left hook. After some initial confusion as to the forecast from the NHC, on Saturday the 27th, NYC orders evacuations. Many others municipalities in the vicinity of NY, NJ, & New England order evacuations as well. On October 29th, at approximately 8 PM EDT (00z 10/30), Sandy makes landfall near Atlantic City, NJ, as a hybrid storm (a disturbance with both tropical & extra-tropical characteristics). The NHC - having issued advisories every three hours but no hurricane & tropical storm alerts north of VA - transfers advisories to the HPC/ WPC. The recovery process begins over the next few days as Sandy's remnants headed into Canada.

So, why did the European-run Model predict that left hook more than a week in advance while the GFS took an additional four days to come around? To answer that, we must ask what is a weather model? They are the solution to a set of partial differential physics-based equations run on Supercomputers. The global models run by the Europeans, Canadians, and us are called global spectral models, which solve these equations mathematically by assuming a wave-like solution (using Taylor/ MacLauren series expansion of trigonometric functions). Our regional models & the United Kingdom's global model (UKMET) are solved at evenly-spaced grid points, and are called - creatively enough - grid-point models. Now, we can answer the first question: how did the Europeans solve their model correctly sooner than us?

Well, the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, England, have powerful supercomputers that are devoted to running their high-resolution global spectral model every 12 hours. The National Weather Service had, in Oct. 2012, just enough supercomputers to run a suite of models every six hours, limiting the GFS's ability to spend more time to initialize (the Euro spends at least six hours doing so), a key part in the process. The low computing power has also forced the GFS's resolution to 27 km as opposed to the ECMWF's 16.7-km resolution. A budget-fight-weary Congress, under "extreme" public pressure, then allocated some of the relief funds to the NWS for purchasing new Supercomputers (one was already ordered before Sandy hit & that was turned on in July 2013), and the Environmental Modeling Center, which runs the GFS, put in the order to IBM, then an American-based company. NCEP EMC subsequently "announced" that once the Sandy-funded computers come online, the GFS & GEFS would be upgraded & then the regional grid-point models (NAM, SREF, NMM, RAP, ARW), which are nested within the GFS & GEFS, would then receive their upgrade.

However, according to Cliff Mass (Univ. of Washington), Lenovo (a Chinese-owned company) has purchased a majority share of IBM, putting the order at risk. I asked the EMC, via Facebook message, about this and they said that they're only allowed to order from American Companies. At the time of the order, IBM was owned by Americans, but was probably negotiating with Lenovo at the time. This could be grounds for invalidating the contract with IBM for the new supercomputer. While that's being sorted out, the GFS & GEFS are 4th globally in forecasting ability... having trouble predicting even day-to-day forecasts, and it gets worse. The European Center has ordered a new American-made Supercomputer to run a 10-km model. RESOLVED: Cray technologies, one of Lenovo's/ IBM's subsidiaries, has taken on NOAA's order.

(In my opinion, however, current research & performance suggests that running a 10-km global spectral model is a bad idea. I'd run a series of nested continental grid models instead, with resolutions (in km) of 16, 12, 4, and 4/3.)

So, when is the NWS getting the Supercomputer? At this time, it is still scheduled for a delivery within the next year or so, but that could change depending on the status of the NWS's contract with IBM. Let's hope there are no (extremely long) delays.

Posting update

Posts will be mainly on FB, which is linked to Twitter @jbreezywx. I also contribute to The Weather Phenomenon & Weather Now Storm Team (primarily on FB).