On end user uncertainty, risk perception, and behavioral intentions (Grundstein FY18) Within the last decade, operational meteorologists have raised concerns that the availability of weather information from a variety of sources may contribute to a perception that weather risk messages are inconsistent and result in negative consequences among end users. The challenge, however, is that…
Title: Advancing ADCIRC U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coast Grids and Capabilities to Facilitate Coupling to the National Water Model in the Extratropical Surge and Tide Operational Forecast System (ESTOFS) Operational Forecasting (Westerink FY18) The primary objective of this project is to improve predictions of water levels caused by extratropical tide and storm surge within the…
Forecasters at NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center (WPC) are responsible for producing Excessive Rainfall Outlooks, which brings awareness to the potential for flood-inducing rains up to three days in advance. However, the amount of rain that qualifies as “excessive” varies from region to region, and pinpointing the specific areas likely to receive heavy rain is challenging,…
Floods are among the most costly and deadly natural disasters that occur in the United States, coming in second to heat events. On average, approximately 100 people in the U.S. perish each year due to flooding. Reliable observations of flooding and inundation spanning larger extents are key in advancing the National Water Model (NWM) capability.…
As the climate continues to change and the frequency, severity, and impacts of wildfires increase, the importance of wildfire prediction and detection becomes even more critical. It then becomes essential to improve fire weather and smoke & air quality forecast accuracies in current operational models. This involves taking advantage of recent advancements in wind and…
The last several hurricane seasons have been active with records being set for the number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic basin. These record-breaking seasons underscore the importance of accurate hurricane forecasting. Imperative to increased forecasting skill for hurricanes is the development of the Hurricane Forecast Analysis System or HAFS. To accelerate improvements…
The process by which observational data is brought into models is called data assimilation (DA). The Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration (JEDI) is the next generation, unified DA framework under collaborative development between NOAA and cross-agency partners through the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA). JEDI will allow for a faster development and…
Community development of the Unified Forecast System (UFS) requires a shared community modeling infrastructure framework, whereby the entire modeling suite (components and applications) follows a collaborative development paradigm. This project laid the foundation for creating a development and maintenance modeling infrastructure to support the involvement of the public, private, and academic community within the UFS…
NOAA’s Weather Program Office (WPO) is soliciting proposals for four grant competitions valued at approximately $13.5 million per year for the following competitions: Projects should focus on advancing science and technology from research innovations to transitionable outputs or prototype products that NOAA or external partners could further develop into practical applications and operations. In alignment…
The Weather Program Office is working with the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University (CSU) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to advance the forecast capabilities of the Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS) through the testing and implementation of stochastic physics configurations. Researchers are testing various configurations…