Unifying Innovations in Forecasting Capabilities Workshop
A UFS Collaboration Powered by EPIC
Monday, July 24, 2023 – Friday, July 28, 2023
Boulder, CO
This summer, the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) and the Unified Forecast System (UFS) will deliver a five-day Unifying Innovations in Forecasting Capabilities Workshop (UIFCW). Throughout the week, attendees will have the opportunity to present their research, learn about updates to the UFS, share challenges and successes related to UFS contributions, and voice their thoughts on where the future will take us from here. The workshop’s goal is to engage the greater Weather Enterprise in the ongoing effort to accelerate contributions to the Unified Forecast System. The theme for this year’s workshop is Innovation and Community.
Objective:
In-person registration is now closed, due to full capacity. Virtual registration will remain open. There will be no on-site registration.
UIFCW 2023 will take place from Monday, July 24, 2023, to Friday, July 28, 2023 at NCAR & UCAR Center Green Campus CG 1, 3080 Center Green Drive, Boulder Colorado, 80301 and online. This event is free to attend. Keep an eye out for additional information regarding after-hours dinners and networking events.
Save the date and check back for more details about #UIFCW2023.
Workshop Schedule
Schedule subject to updates. Additional information will be added as we plan each session.
All times are in Mountain Daylight Time (MDT).
July 24, 2023
8:00 am – 1:00 pm | Training on the Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS)
1:00 pm | Welcome & Kickoff
1:30 pm | Opening Remarks by Dr. Michael Morgan, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Environmental Observation and Prediction
2:00 pm | Overview: State of the Science of UFS
Description | This session provides an overview of the state of UFS science.
2:30 pm | Why UFS? Using UFS as a Teaching Tool in Academia
Description | This session will focus on UFS as a teaching tool, including use cases and needs.
3:00 pm | Partnerships: How to Expand Our Community
Description | This session will discuss the need for partnerships, strategies to create partnerships, and expanding the community.
3:30 pm | BREAK
4:00 pm | Inclusion in Community Modeling Followed by a Panel Discussion on the Importance and Need for Diversity & Inclusion
Description | Leaders from EPIC, the UFS, and UFS-R2O will give a talk on community modeling followed by a panel discussion on the importance and need for diversity and inclusion in community modeling.
5:30 pm | Conclude and Look Ahead
6:00 pm | Welcome Event for New WINGS Dissertation Fellows
Description | A welcome session for all new WINGS Dissertation Fellows. During this time, WINGS fellows will present their projects and network to find mentors.
7:00 pm | Dinner/Mixer
July 25, 2023
9:00 am | Welcome and Kickoff
9:05 am | Parallel Sessions with Updates on & Challenges of UFS Applications
Description | We will hold three concurrent sessions that will highlight updates on the Short-Range Weather Application/Rapid Refresh Forecast System, Medium-Range/Sub-Seasonal Weather Application, and Hurricane Application. Each presenter will have 15 minutes to present their research on their respective subject. If you are interested in submitting your work, please see our submission guidelines.
Short-Range Weather Application and Rapid Refresh Forecast System
Short-range weather includes atmospheric behavior from less than an hour to several days. See more information on the UFS Configuration and current developments.
Medium-Range Weather and Sub-seasonal to Seasonal Applications
Medium-range weather includes atmospheric behavior out to about two weeks, while sub-seasonal to seasonal includes atmospheric and ocean behavior from about two weeks to about one year. See more information about the UFS Configuration and current developments.
Hurricanes
The Hurricane Application forecasts hurricane track, intensity, and related effects out to about one week. See more information about the UFS Configuration and current development.
10:30 am | BREAK
11:35 am | Q & A for Parallel Sessions with Updates on UFS Applications
12:00 pm | LUNCH
1:00 pm | Community Discussion: Insights from Industry and Academia
Description | Professors and industry professionals will present on the area(s) in which they encountered the greatest barriers to success using different UFS applications.
2:00 pm | Panel Discussion on Use Cases & Needs of UFS Applications by New Professionals, Professors & Industry
Description | Experts will respond to each use case presentation and develop solutions for how the presenters can overcome their barriers.
3:00 pm | BREAK
3:15 pm | Parallel Sessions with Cross-Cutting Concepts
Description |
Cross-Cutting Concepts #1 – Physics, Verification, and Validation
Presentations will feature cutting-edge research on topics such as scale-aware physics, land physics, verification, and validation, which impact multiple applications.
Cross-Cutting Concepts #2 – System Architecture
Presentations will feature cutting-edge research on system architecture-related topics that impact multiple applications.
Cross-Cutting Concepts #3 – Dynamics and Nesting
Presentations will feature cutting-edge research on topics such as dynamics and nesting, which impact multiple applications.
4:45 pm | BREAK
5:00 pm | Joint Q & A for Parallel Sessions with Cross-Cutting Concepts
5:30 pm | Conclude and Look Ahead
July 26, 2023
9:00 am | Welcome and Kickoff
9:30 am | Roundtable Discussion on Community Modeling
Description |
A roundtable discussion where participants will split into tables of 8 and discuss barriers to entry into community modeling and challenges surrounding community modeling; groups will then brainstorm ideas to best solve these challenges.
This roundtable session provides the opportunity for an interactive discussion between all stakeholder groups interested in community modeling. During the event, groups rotate through tables to discuss a variety of challenges/barriers for entry into community modeling and brainstorm ideas on how to address these challenges. The tables will include a range of topics such as:
-
- lack of compute (HPC) resources
- access to funding
- rapid code changes/coding barriers
- how to diversify participation across sectors and disciplines
- incentives/motivation to participate in UFS/run UFS code
- how to best show the value of code contributions/innovations
- how to enhance knowledge transfer and collaboration among contributors
- how to support low readiness level (RL) research/contributions to code
- training resources for anyone interested in modeling
The goal: To build and develop new relationships that span beyond key stakeholders based on shared interests in community modeling. The session will have multiple tables (one topic per table) that participants will rotate through to share ideas during three separate interactive discussion periods over a 90-minute period.
11:00 am | BREAK
11:30 am | Open Discussion: Roadblocks
Description | Contributors to the UFS will identify and discuss what they see as roadblocks to the UFS. Debrief findings of the roundtable discussion on community modeling and highlight how these findings will be addressed in the future.
12:00 pm | LUNCH
1:00 pm | Social & Behavioral Science Professional Talk
Description | A social and behavioral sciences professional will speak about integrating these fields into the greater Weather Enterprise.
1:30 pm | EPIC Support for the UFS
Description | An EPIC team member will demonstrate how EPIC supports the UFS.
2:15 pm | EPIC Infrastructure Update
Description | An EPIC team member will provide an EPIC infrastructure update.
3:00 pm | BREAK
3:30 pm | Panel Discussion on JCSDA, EPIC, and Community DA Development
Description | Each collaborating data assimilation (DA) institution (i.e., JCSDA, EPIC, PSL, and EMC) will summarize their role in the development of DA; presentations will touch on infrastructure, science, and community support and will be followed by a Q&A.
4:15 pm | Data Management, Optimization, Compression
Description | The scientific community targets the data assimilation of petabytes of observations for the development of machine learning models or model components, thereby transforming weather and climate prediction from a physics problem into a data problem. In this session, we welcome a presentation on the infrastructure necessary for improved data management, optimization, compression, versioning, licensing, and seamless access, which will enable scientific innovation.
5:00 pm | Poster Session
Description | Posters and their authors will be arranged in a gallery style walk-through in the main lobby. Conference participants are invited to meet and discuss science topics at length with authors.
July 27, 2023
9:00 am | Welcome and Kickoff
9:15 am | Unified Model Practices
Description | This talk provides an overview of the model development process used for Unified Modeling. This information can inform our own UFS model development process and contribute to establishing best practices for UFS development.
9:45 am | Research to Operations (R2O) and Operations to Research (O2R) Process With Q&A
Description | This presentation will discuss the R2O2R process with a particular focus on stages and gates and perspectives from testbeds. A Q & A will follow the presentation.
11:00 am | BREAK
11:30 am | Keynote: Emerging Technologies & Opportunities: GPU and Earth System Modeling
Description | This keynote will focus on emerging technologies and opportunities using GPU and Earth System Modeling.
12:00 pm | LUNCH
1:00 pm | Panel Discussion on Open Computing & Shaping the Future of Computing for Modeling
Description | The idea of open modeling requires open computing—which spans sectors including the silicon industry, computing providers, and ecosystem developers—to thrive.
2:00 pm | BREAK
2:15 pm | Parallel Sessions with Emerging Applications
Description | With an eye towards the future, this session will feature presentations about cutting-edge research towards the development, testing, and evaluation of upcoming UFS applications, including coastal, marine, space weather, and air quality applications.
3:15 pm | BREAK
3:30 pm | UFS as a Decision Tool: A Private Industry Perspective
Description | This session will showcase perspectives of private industry professionals who use the UFS as a decision tool for their business objectives.
4:00 pm | Emerging Technologies: AI
Description | Science community members will present on emerging technologies in artificial intelligence.
4:30 pm | Emerging Technologies: Cloud Computing
Description | Science community members will present on emerging technologies in cloud computing.
5:00 pm | Science Spotlight on Hierarchical System Development
Description | The Hierarchical System Development (HSD) approach captures steps for contributing innovations to the UFS from WPO-funded projects, NOAA labs, and the community in general.
5:30 pm | Conclude and Look Ahead
July 28, 2023
9:00 am | Welcome and Kickoff
9:30 am | Community Modeling Board
Description | The UFS Chief Science Advisor and members of the newly established Community Modeling Board will discuss their plans to engage with the community, UFS governance process and roles, and future plans.
10:30 am | Coffee Break / Live Demo Running the UFS SRW Application in the Cloud
Description | Participants can watch a live demonstration of running the UFS SRW Application in the cloud.
11:00 am | Making the Unified Forecast System Cool
Description | The community will discuss strategies for entry into UFS and how to draw in the next generation and the existing community. Current Lapenta Interns will discuss their findings.
12:00 pm | Debrief: Findings, Recommendations & Closing Statements
Description | For our final session, three panelists from EPIC, the UFS, and UFS-R2O will come together for a look back at our key findings and takeaways from the workshop.
Virtual Training Workshops UIFCW23 – July 24-26
Training 1 | Contributing to UFS/EPIC GitHub Repositories
Monday, July 24, 2023
8:00 am – 12:00 pm MDT
Does the process of getting started with the Unified Forecast System (UFS) seem daunting? For many new members of the UFS community, the learning curve can feel steep. This training session will be an introductory session on GitHub and community modeling. We will walk you through small use cases to check out code, run it, and commit an innovation. This training will give you an in-depth understanding of what it takes to be a part of the community and contribute your great ideas to advance UFS weather modeling.
Objective | Community members will learn to contribute to the UFS weather model and applications. We will show you how easy it is to start building, running, innovating, and contributing to the repositories in a small or large way.
Hosted via Google Meet. Limited to 30 in-person attendees.
Training 2 | Running UFS Land Data Assimilation (DA) System v1.1.0 in the Cloud
Monday, July 24, 2023
8:00 am – 12:00 pm MDT
Participants can expect a walk-through of the system and a demo of how to run public release v1.1.0, which includes updates currently available at the head of the UFS land-DA_workflow development branch. In the Land DA System, the Noah-MP land surface model (LSM) and the Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration (JEDI) software stack are used to assimilate snow depth data via the Local Ensemble Transform Kalman Filter-Optimal Interpolation (LETKF-OI) algorithm. This training will show community members how to log into a HeadNode via a cloud service provider, run the Land DA System in the cloud, and evaluate output. Community members will walk away with source code to be able to replicate this on their own after the event as well. Learn more about Land DA here.
Objective | In this training session, participants will learn how to use Land DA.
Hosted via Google Meet. Limited to 30 in-person attendees.
Training 3 | Detecting Deforestation and Forest Degradation | Post Workshop Q&A
Monday, July 24, 2023
1:00 pm – 6:00 pm MDT | Workshop – Detecting Deforestation and Forest Degradation
Description | The Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to offer an immersive, two-part cloud technology training hosted by AWS representatives. This training will enable participants to visualize and detect changes in geospatial images using the Sentinel-2 dataset from the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI). The two sessions, entitled “SageMaker Notebook for Advanced Visualizations” and “Build Web Application with AWS Services,” will provide hands-on training with Amazon SageMaker, AWS Lambda, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), AWS Cloud9, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon API Gateway, and more. This training highlights EPIC’s commitment to advance the Unified Forecast System (UFS) by leveraging the power of cloud technology.
For an overview of the workshop please visit: AWS Hosted Event.
Objective | This workshop aims to bridge the gap between the scientific weather community’s expertise in numerical weather prediction (NWP) and the practical application of AWS cloud services. At the end of the workshop, scientists, researchers, and contributors to the UFS will have a practical understanding of many useful AWS functionalities. By integrating their NWP expertise with AWS cloud technology, participants will be poised to enhance their contributions to the UFS significantly, fostering advancements in numerical weather forecasting capabilities.
Limited to 30 in-person attendees. Hosted via Google Meet for hybrid and virtual attendees.
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
1:00 pm – 3:15 pm MDT | Post-Workshop Q&A – Detecting Deforestation and Forest Degradation
Description | This Q&A session will be facilitated by our AWS representatives. The session will provide an opportunity for participants to clarify doubts and seek personalized assistance regarding the application of AWS technology to NWP. This face-to-face interaction is designed to supplement participants’ learning from the workshop, address any challenges encountered, and provide further insights into AWS functionalities and their role in enhancing the UFS.
Objective | The primary objective of this open session is to reinforce the knowledge acquired from the AWS workshop, enabling a smoother transition of theoretical understanding to practical application. Through personalized assistance, we aim to ensure that participants fully grasp the AWS concepts, empowering them to successfully integrate these tools within their scientific contributions to NWP technology.
Limited to 30 in-person attendees. Hosted via Google Meet for hybrid and virtual attendees.
Training 4 | Running the Short-Range Weather (SRW) Application v2.1.0 Containers in Azure with Post-Workshop Q&A
Wednesday, July 26, 2023
8:30 am – 12:00 pm MDT | Workshop – Running the Short-Range Weather (SRW) Application v2.1.0 Containers in Azure
Description | The Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC) is teaming up with Microsoft Azure to present an engaging workshop in cloud technology. This training is designed to enable participants to understand and apply the process of running the containerized Short-Range Weather (SRW) Application (App) v2.1.0 in the Azure cloud environment. Facilitated by Azure experts, this workshop will provide a thorough guide to deploying and managing containers using Azure Container Instances. We will also be learning about AZ-Hop, which is Azure’s HPC on-demand platform where users can easily set up the infrastructure to run Unified Forecast System (UFS) applications. This aligns with EPIC’s goal to expand the UFS by harnessing the potential of diverse cloud technologies.
Objective | This workshop is designed to connect the scientific weather community’s proficiency in SRW prediction with the practical application of Azure cloud services. Participants will acquire a comprehensive understanding of several Azure services and how to apply them to the SRW App. The integration of their SRW expertise with Azure cloud technology will position them to significantly augment their contributions to the UFS, ensuring improvements in SRW prediction capabilities.
Limited to 30 in-person attendees. Hosted via Google Meet for hybrid and virtual attendees.
Wednesday, July 26, 2023
1:00 pm – 3:15 pm MDT | Post-Workshop Q&A – Running the Short-Range Weather (SRW) Application v2.1.0 Containers in Azure
Description | This Q&A session will be facilitated by our Azure representatives. The session will provide an opportunity for participants to clarify doubts and seek personalized assistance regarding the application of Azure technology to SRW App v2.1.0 Containers. This face-to-face interaction is designed to supplement participants’ learning from the workshop, address any challenges encountered, and provide further insights into Azure functionalities and their role in enhancing the UFS.
Objective | The primary objective of this open session is to reinforce the knowledge acquired from the Azure workshop, enabling a smoother transition of theoretical understanding to practical application. Through personalized assistance, we aim to ensure that participants fully grasp the Azure concepts, empowering them to successfully integrate these tools within their scientific contributions to NWP technology.
Limited to 30 in-person attendees. Hosted via Google Meet for hybrid and virtual attendees.
Abstract Details
UFS Application | Short Range Weather (SRW) Application and Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS)
This session will highlight the scientific updates, achievements, and challenges of the UFS SRW Application, including research, development, testing, and evaluation of the 3D Real-Time Mesoscale Analysis System (3DRTMA) and Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS).
UFS Application | Medium Range Weather (MRW) and Sub seasonal to Seasonal (S2S) Applications
This session will feature cutting-edge research toward scientific updates, development, testing, and evaluation of the next-generation Global Forecast System (GFS) for medium-range weather out to 16 days and the Global Ensemble Forecast system (GEFS) for sub-seasonal ensemble forecasts out to 45 days based on the global coupled UFS MRW and S2S Applications.
UFS Application | Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS)
This session will feature cutting-edge research towards scientific updates, development, testing, and evaluation of the next-generation Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS).
Cross-Cutting #1 | Physics, Land, Verification & Validation
In this session featuring cross-cutting components of the UFS, presentations will feature cutting-edge research on topics such as scale-aware physics, land physics, verification, and validation, which impact multiple applications.
Cross-Cutting #2 | System Architecture
In this session featuring cross-cutting components of the UFS, presentations will feature cutting-edge research on system architecture-related topics that impact multiple applications.
Cross-Cutting #3 | Dynamics and Nesting
In this session featuring cross-cutting components of the UFS, presentations will feature cutting-edge research on topics such as dynamics and nesting, which impact multiple applications.
Emerging Applications | Coastal, Marine, Space Weather, and Air Quality
With an eye towards the future, this session will feature presentations about cutting-edge research towards the development, testing, and evaluation of upcoming UFS applications, including but not limited to, coastal, marine, space weather, and air quality.
Emerging Technologies | AI & Cloud Computing
This session will feature presentations from science community members on emerging technologies in artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
Hotel Reservations
We have reserved a block of rooms at the Hampton Inn for attendees who need hotel accommodations.
Hampton Inn & Suites Boulder-North
6333 Lookout Road
Boulder, Colorado, 80301, USA
(303) 530-3300
Lunches are available to purchase and will be provided by UCAR catering during the scheduled 1-hour lunch break each full day of the workshop (Tuesday – Thursday, 3 meals for $60). Lunches must be purchased for all 3 days and in advance by Tuesday, July 11, 2023. No payments will be accepted after Tuesday, July 11th or on-site. If you are interested in purchasing catered lunches, please click here, and select Unifying Innovations in Forecasting Capabilities Workshop from the drop-down menu.
Please note that if you opt in for the catered lunches, you must pay for all three days. Therefore, in the “Amount to Pay” field, please type $60 ($20/day for 3 days).
Note: The nearest restaurants are over 1 mile from the venue and time is limited for lunch – 1 hour.
Important Dates for UIFCW 2023
May 2023
- 31st: Abstract Submission Closes (extended from May 19)
June 2023
- 23rd: Last Day to Book a Room via the Hampton Inn & Suites Room Block
July 2023
- 11th: Lunch Meal Payment Closes
- 17th: Registration Closes
- 24th – 28th: UIFCW 2023
I am text block. Click edit button to change this text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
