Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of Operational Numerical Weather Prediction

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A Vision for Environmental Services as NWP Enters
the Next 50 Years

• Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of Operational
  Numerical Weather Prediction
• Dr. Jack Hayes Director, Office of Science and
  TechnologyNOAA National Weather Service
• June 16, 2004

2
Overview

• Progress 1950s Today
• Environmental Services for the 21st Century
  Driven by a New Generation of Scientific Models
• Challenges and Strategies

3
Numerical Weather Prediction 1954-Today

• Sustained improvement -- Day per decade for over
  40 years
• Key to increasingly accurate and longer-lead time
  weather forecasts and warnings

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Some ExamplesImproved Operational Warnings and
Forecasts
Hurricane Track Forecast Errors in Atlantic
basin 24-72 Hrs
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Some ExamplesImproved Operational Warnings and
Forecasts
QPF 1 Threat Score Days 1 and 2
Day 1
Day 2
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Past Success Generates New Challenges

• Nations Needs Growing
• Migration to coasts and
  
  environmentally sensitive areas
• Awareness of health and
  
  economic impacts
• Ecosystem sensitivities
• ST Advancing
• Observing systems
• Satellites
• Radar
• Modeling
• Physics
• Ensembles

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Vision Earth System Models Addressing Wide Range
of Interdisciplinary Societal Needs

• Coupled air, water, land models
• Linked to key societal focus areas disaster
  mitigation, energy distribution, health,
  ecosystems
• Providing increasing specificity and accuracy
• At longer ranges
• Quantifying uncertainty
• In digital form

Optimizing pro-active decision making nationally,
regionally, and locally
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Environmental Services for 21st CenturyExamples

• Tornadoes
• Warning lead times increase from 13 min to 1 hr
  for neighborhoods and communities
• Virtually eliminating loss of life due to lack of
  warning
• Severe Thunderstorms
• Warning lead times increase from 18 min to 2 hrs
  
• Improving air traffic routing--virtually
  eliminating
  severe weatherrelated air
  traffic delays
• Winter Storms
• Warnings days in advance
• Improving commerce and
  transportation sectors

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Environmental Services for 21st CenturyExamples

• Air Quality
• Warnings about poor air quality 4-6 days in
  advance for
  metropolitan areas
• Power companies shift to alternate fuels
• Alerts individuals at risk and health care
  professionals
• Climate
• Probabilistic forecasts of temperature and
  
  precipitation indicating weekly departures from
  normal issued
  months in advance
• Communities and weather-sensitive
  industries reduce
  risk

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Environmental Services for 21st CenturyExamples

• Water Resource Information
• Provide high-resolution water quantity,
  quality,
  and soil moisture forecasts
• Emergency and resource managers
  mitigate losses for
  conditions ranging
  from droughts to floods
• Ecosystem Impact Information
• Provide forecasts of weather, water, climate
  impacts on ecosystems and scenarios of ecosystem
  response to management decisions
• Management decisions reflect relationships among
  humans, nonhuman species, and the environments in
  which they live.
• Source Report by U.S. Commission on Ocean
  Policy

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Achieving the VisionST Challenges

• Achieving this level of service excellence will
  require breakthroughs in ST
• Data Assimilation (DA) and
  Modeling
• Observations
• Dissemination

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Challenges DA and Modeling
Integrated Environmental Forecasts and
Information

• Developing advanced and high resolution DA
  techniques
• Mesoscale, microscale, better exploitation of
  satellite data
• Improving models and linkages among weather,
  water, climate, and other environmental processes
• Advancing probabilistic environmental
  information characterizing uncertainty
• Improving model post-processing and
  decision-assistance techniques

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Challenges Observations
Observations when and where neededintegrated,
adaptable, extensible, stable, continuous, and
quality-assured

• Improving temporal, spatial, and spectral
  resolution at all scales
• Obtaining observations of
  new environmental elements
• Sustaining data quality and timeliness
• Integrating multi-purpose observing systems and
  networks within an extensible enterprise
  architecture

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Challenges Dissemination
Reach each person in the Nation

• Keeping pace with need for more data and
  information
• Expanding content and coverage
• Implementing enterprise information delivery and
  access systems
• Providing data mining and decision assistance
  tools

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Meeting the ChallengeStrategies

• Adopt broader view of Environmental Prediction
• Weather, water, and climate forecasts linked to
  societal impacts
• Implement integrated Earth Observation System --
  GEOSS
• Develop common Earth
  system models, fully
  exploiting ensemble and
  other
  information
  enhancement techniques

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Meeting the ChallengeStrategies

• Develop and sustain reliable enterprise IT
  architecture
• Maximizes responsiveness -- promotes scientific
  interoperability
• Accelerate transition from research to operations
• Better plans, processes, and
  architectures -- ESMF
• Improve partnerships,
  nationally and internationally
• Increase collaborations
  
  end-to-end -- WRF

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Summary

• Advances in NWP over last 50 years have enabled
  great progress in operational weather forecasting
• Advances in numerical earth-system prediction
  over next 50 years have potential to transform
  way society adapts to its changing environment