When funding weather research to improve forecasts for the community, many competitions are externally focused to organizations outside of NOAA. This allows a diverse set of institutions to work together on innovative solutions for forecast challenges. This external research compliments internal NOAA research efforts to improve operational forecasting. While the combined research efforts are critically important, oftentimes there are several hurdles that must be overcome for a successful transition. For instance, some project activities require NOAA involvement to advance through higher readiness levels before they can transition to operations. Additionally, entities directly responsible for the work of transition have limited support for incorporating all innovations that are near the finish line into operations.
This lack of continued support for projects that are near completion creates a backlog of usable resources that cannot be fully incorporated into operations. Discussions with the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Office of Science and Technology indicated that this backlog impedes the growth and progress of NWS operations which reduces the benefit of forecast improvements for the public.
That’s why this year the Weather Program Office chose to work towards resolving this issue by issuing a NOAA internal funding competition. This competition will shepherd those projects on the brink of operational application (readiness level 6 or higher), and will ensure a return on investment for NOAA resources spent to improve forecasts. Projects selected from this competition will receive funding and support to transition their final deliverables to an NWS office within a year of completion. The science priorities identified for the competition are below:
- Data assimilation techniques for the UFS weather prediction.
- Ensemble techniques for the UFS out to subseasonal timescales.
- Physical parameterization schemes for any component of the UFS.
- Post-processing methods and tools for verification and validation of UFS predictions.
- National Water Model improvements.
- Incorporating uncertainty information in the forecast/warning process.
- Sunsetting of outdated and expensive operational tools, techniques and systems.
- Social science research to operations.
WPO is proud to announce the award recipients of the JTTI Internal Funding Competition below. Read on to see the list of awards, and get an idea of the operational enhancements we look forward to upon conclusion of the projects.
*Award totals are distributed over the life of the projects and conditional on appropriations
Projects Selected
| Project Title | PI’s & Co-PI’s | Affiliations |
|---|---|---|
| Evaluating Alternative Risk Communication Strategies for the Storm Prediction Center’s Convective Outlook | Patrick Marsh (PI) | NOAA/NWS/ Storm Prediction Center (SPC) |
| Accelerating transition to JEDI ensemble solvers for coupled data assimilation in the GEFS system | Sergey Frolov (PI) | NOAA/OAR/ Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL) |
| Hazard Services: Modernizing Weather Prediction Center, Ocean Prediction Center, National Hurricane Center/Tropical Analysis and Forecasting Branch, and Honolulu Weather Forecast Office Workflows | Nathan Hardin (PI) | NOAA/OAR/ Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) |
| Transition and evaluation of Snow-to-Liquid Ratio algorithms into the Unified Post Processor for UFS medium range and short range applications | Hui-Ya Chuang (PI) | NOAA/ NWS/ Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) |
| Further Development of the Unified Gravity Wave Physics Suite for the UFS | Joseph Olson (PI) | NOAA/OAR/ Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) |
| The Continued Evolution of Severe Weather Warnings through Threats-in-Motion | Kodi Berry (PI) | NOAA/OAR/ National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) |
| Transitioning Critical MET Supported Software to Operations at the Weather Prediction Center | James Nelson (PI) | NOAA/NWS/ Weather Prediction Center (WPC) |
| Operationalizing the computation and dissemination of the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI) and value-added products for CONUS-wide drought monitoring and early warning at the NOAA-Climate Prediction Center. | Mimi Hughes (PI) | NOAA/OAR/ Physical Sciences Laboratory (PSL) |
| Transitioning Bayesian Joint Probability (BJP) Calibration of Week 3-4 Predictions to Operations | Dan Collins (PI) | NOAA/NWS/ Climate Prediction Center (CPC) |
| Transitioning HYSPLIT to Operations. | Alice Crawford (PI) | NOAA/OAR/ Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) |
| Atmospheric Composition Data Assimilation for the Unified Forecast System (UFS) on Global and Regional Scales. | Cory Martin (PI) | NOAA/NWS/ Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) |
