The Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017 (WRFIA) instructs NOAA to prioritize improving weather data, modeling, computing, forecasting and warnings for the protection of life and property and for the enhancement of the national economy. The National Integrated Drought Information System Reauthorization Act of 2018 instructs NOAA to establish the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) to accelerate community-developed scientific and technological enhancements into the operational applications for numerical weather prediction (NWP).
The WRFIA states: “EPIC will advance weather modeling skill, reclaiming and maintaining international leadership in the area of Numerical Weather Prediction, and improving Research to Operations (R2O) by:
- Leveraging the weather enterprise to provide expertise on removing barriers to improving NWP;
- Enabling scientists and engineers to effectively collaborate in areas important for improving operational global NWP skill, including model development, data assimilation techniques, system architecture integration, and computational efficiencies;
- Strengthening NOAA’s ability to undertake research projects in pursuit of substantial advancements in weather forecast skill;
- Utilizing and leveraging existing resources across NOAA’s enterprise; and
- Creating a community global weather research modeling system.
If you have questions or ideas, please contact us at epic.wpo@noaa.gov.
The Unified Forecast System (UFS) is a community-based, coupled, comprehensive Earth modeling system. The UFS numerical applications span local to global domains and predictive time scales from sub-hourly analyses to seasonal predictions. UFS is designed to support the Weather Enterprise and to be the source system for NOAA's operational numerical weather prediction applications. If you have questions or ideas, please contact our team!
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From August 6-8, 2019, NOAA hosted the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) Community Workshop in Boulder, CO. The purpose of this workshop was to gain insight from a diverse group of partners, high-performance computing experts, and the broader weather community (i.e. academia and private industry) in the planning, development, and strategic vision for the EPIC. Click here for the agenda. Below you will find an overview of the workshop.
A workshop was held in Boulder, CO from March 6 – 7, 2019 to begin the EPIC project planning within NOAA. Twenty NOAA federal employees with more than 400 combined years of experience in numerical modeling and/or the transition of research into operations participated. From this collaboration, the EPIC Vision Paper is the foundation and guide to initial development of EPIC.
by Leah Dubots, WPO Pathways Intern
The Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) will accelerate community-developed scientific and technological advancements into the operational applications for Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) by supporting a Unified Forecast System (UFS) community model. NOAA is working closely with entities in the weather enterprise (public, private, and academic) to inform the planning, development, and strategy for EPIC. To engage the community and inform the next-steps for the EPIC Program, NOAA’s Weather Program Office (WPO) hosted the EPIC Community Workshop at the University of Colorado, Boulder University Memorial Center from August 6-8, 2019. The objectives of the workshop were to co-create a vision for EPIC to accelerate the transition of research to operations; share the current status and future of community-based Earth System Modeling; understand NOAA’s developmental process of EPIC and create shared next steps in the development of EPIC; and identify emerging technologies for Earth System Modeling.
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