Symposium on the 50 th Anniversary of Operational Numerical Weather Prediction

1. 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 Prediction1954-Today • Sustained improvement -- Day per decade for over 40 years • Key to increasingly accurate and longer-lead time weather forecasts and warnings

4. Some ExamplesImproved Operational Warnings and Forecasts Hurricane Track Forecast Errors in Atlantic basin: 24-72 Hrs

5. Some ExamplesImproved Operational Warnings and Forecasts QPF 1” Threat Score: Days 1 and 2 Day 1 Day 2

6. Past Success Generates New Challenges • Nation’s Needs Growing • Migration to coasts and environmentally sensitive areas • Awareness of health and economic impacts • Ecosystem sensitivities • S&T Advancing • Observing systems • Satellites • Radar • Modeling • Physics • Ensembles

7. VisionEarth 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

8. 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 weather–related air traffic delays • Winter Storms • Warnings days in advance • Improving commerce and transportation sectors

9. 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

10. 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

11. Achieving the VisionS&T Challenges • Achieving this level of service excellence will require breakthroughs in S&T: • Data Assimilation (DA) and Modeling • Observations • Dissemination

12. 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

13. Challenges: Observations Observations when and where needed–integrated, 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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