National Blend of Global Models An Overview Jeff Waldstreicher NOAA/NWS Eastern Region HQ Bohemia, NY 15th Northeast Regional Operational Workshop November 12-13, 2014 – Albany, NY

Origins of the National Model Blend REASONING Local / Regional Model Blend Initiatives WRN Roadmap NAPA Report Local/Regional Initiatives: Variety of regions and offices have been looking into ways to provide a better starting point for forecasters (BOIVerify – consensus models, CR Model Blend, etc) WRN Roadmap: Highlighted plans to proactively adopt new science & technology developments and leverage field innovation to enhance services and to implement continuous process improvement by identifying repeatable best practices to provide higher quality services NAPA Report: Recommended that we need to facilitate consistency and sharing of information, because the lack of consistency impedes the ability of our partners to use our data. They interviewed staff who indicated that one challenge is that issues are “being addressed by geographically-focused offices without a means to effectively coordinate across the organization” Sandy Supplemental: large chunk of money available for mitigating the potential gap in POES data in the JPSS era Variety of great projects were proposed and funded to mitigate the impacts of a potential gap, both at NWS and NESDIS CR model blend was one such project -> "better use of existing model data" to mitigate a potential gap funded as a way to explore expanding that tool across the country while ensuring it is a top performer FUNDING Sandy Supplemental JPSS Gap Mitigation: projects that make better use of existing model data

Early Roots in Regional Blends Improvements in verification and consistency scores for the NWS National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD) Operational Efficiencies BUT… Sustainability of the regional solution? Consistency between regional approaches and national centers? Model data dissemination limitations?

Early Roots in Regional Blends Need a national system: Harness full capabilities of NWP systems and national computing power Full suite of ensembles Employ state of the art statistical post processing techniques Downscaling Bias Correction Enable enhanced consistency within NWS forecast information National Blend of Models

National Model Blender Project Develop a set of next- generation foundational gridded guidance products for NDFD weather elements based on NWS and non-NWS model information. FNMOC CMC ECWMF ENSEMBLES GFS ENSEMBLES ECWMF CMC ENSEMBLES GFS NDFD

National Model Blender Project Objective Improve quality and consistency of the NWS National Digital Forecast Database Improve operational efficiency 6-8 hrs. of manual grid manipulation Leveraging skill of guidance and the blend to assist with freeing up time to focus on DSS/radar/whatever else comes up. Current NWS Forecaster Leverage skill of guidance to assist with freeing up time to focus on DSS and hazardous weather operations

NDFD Elements

The National Blend Project Create a NWS methodology for a national blend (“best”) product, beginning with the Day 3 - 8 time frame (Phase I) Extensible to a full set of NWS deterministic and probabilistic products covering days 1-10 (Phase II). GFS ECWMF ECWMF ENSEMBLES CMC NAEFS Phase 1 – models to be used: Deterministic GFS and ECMWF NAEFS (North American Ensemble Forecast System) – includes ensembles of GFS and Canadian (GEM). ECMWF ensembles.

National Blend Project – Phase I Focus on Days 3- 8, so initial development efforts are concentrated on global deterministic and ensemble systems Gridded Guidance Products: Max/Min Temperature 3-hr Temp and Dewpoint Wind speed and direction Sky Cover PoP Precipitation Type QPF John Slide The gridded elements that are going to be produced in Phase I are the following: 3 hourly Temperature; Maximum and Minimum Temperature; 3 hourly temperature, dewpoint, sky, and wind; And 12 hourly PoP.

National Blend Project – Phase II Additional Elements: Snowfall Amount Wind Gusts Predominant Weather Others as needed* *Derive where it makes sense to ensure consistency, efficiency: i.e. Relative Humidity, Apparent Temperature Expansion to Days 1-10 Non-global NWP systems (e.g., NAM, SREF) Development of a suite of probabilistic guidance

The National Blend Plan The National Blend will be distributed twice daily. WPC will provide oversight of the National Blend for Days 3-8 to maintain meteorological and spatial consistency. WFO’s will receive both objective and WPC (edited) grids. WPC Jim Slide The Blend will be produced and distributed twice per day. The “RAW” blended output will go to the WFO and the Weather Prediction Center. WPC will also provide oversight of the National Blend to ensure meteorological and spatial consistency. These post-processed grids will also be sent to the WFOs. In the end the WFO forecaster will have both sets of data, the RAW blended guidance and the WPC edited gridded guidance. Weather Forecast Offices

8 Sub-Projects Funded from Sandy Supplemental ~$2.2 million Lead efforts of post-processing team, contribute GEFS Reforecast data sets, contribute to PoP/QPF development and new blending approaches, participate in evaluation (Hamill; OAR/ESRL/PSD) Advanced MOS statistical post-processing techniques for calibration of NDFD variables and blending of model output (Gilbert; OST/MDL) Expand NAEFS post-processing (Zhu; NCEP/EMC)

Sub-Projects Funded from Sandy Supplemental ~$2.2 million Accelerate URMA/RTMA improvements for use as “Analysis of Record” in model blender (DiMego/Pondeca; NCEP/EMC) Perform grid-to-grid and grid-to-point verifications (Ruth; OST/MDL) Data management and visualization tools to improve collaboration (Gilbert; OST/MDL) Transition NCEP’s WPC blending and ensemble visualization capability to AWIPS II for the NCEP Perspective (Mainelli; NCEP/NCO) Training (Mostek/Bua; COMET)

Consistency - NWS Standard Terrain Different terrain used in downscaling systems (AWIPS D2D display, GFE, RTMA) GFE - RTMA Terrain All shaded areas represent differences greater than 100m Example: Gridded MOS 2-m T @ 12 hours, diff > 10oF

Consistency - NWS Standard Terrain Development groups, including those responsible for post-processing and those responsible for the analysis will downscale to the same terrain in use by the WFOs in GFE. Develop methodology with schedule to merge local edits into a national terrain file Develop procedures to create a gridded land/water mask for MDL and EMC downscaling applications consistent with the AWIPS terrain file and marine polygons Scheduled for AWIPS 14.4.1, baselined by June 2015 Remaining Question: How do local terrain edits get back to a national file?

Plenary Group (Regions, NWSEO, NCEP, OST, OCWWS, SPPO, OAR) Project Management Project Advisor Steve Lord Project Manager Kathy Gilbert Plenary Group (Regions, NWSEO, NCEP, OST, OCWWS, SPPO, OAR) Analysis and Verification (Ruth) Dissemination (Settelmaier and Gilbert Working level Teams Post Processing (Hamill) Outreach (Sieveking and Gagan) Testing and Training (Novak and Craven)

National Blend – Analysis & Verification Multi-Panel Graphical Interface created by MDL: http://www.mdl.nws.noaa.gov/~blend/blender.prototype.php Initial evaluations of individual components of the blend Prototype National Blend grids Provide feedback to RTMA developers Provide feedback to Blend developers Show verification of experimental blends Coming Soon: Ability to overlay surface observations Grid-based and point-based verification statistics for prototype blends Jim Slide One of the most useful tools to come out of the project thus far has been a website created MDL. Any one of us can go and compare individual components of the blend, view the latest prototype National Blend, and compare RTMA analysis. This page continues to evolve and seems to have new features added every week. John and I encourage everyone to log into the site with your NOAA username and password. Coming very soon will be the ability to overlay surface observations which, will be key for everyone to chip in and help evaluate the progress of the RTMA improvement project.

RTMA/URMA Evaluation

Blend Evaluation

National Blend Project - Evaluation Internal Evaluation through Summer 2015 (Testing and Evaluation Team) Formal Evaluation Sept 2015 – Mar 2016 Analysis of Accuracy, Consistency, and Workload (focused on NDFD, WPC, and National Blend) John Slide Going forward, input from the field will remain very important. As the project matures next year, there will be two evaluation periods. The first will be internal to the Testing and Evaluation Team. The second, slated to begin next September, will be the formal evaluation period by WFOs. WFO input will be key component of evaluation.

National Blend Project - Training Overview of the National Blend Components of the National Blend Statistical Techniques & Procedures National Blend Verification National Blend Reliability WPC Procedures John Slide Read Slide

…or time for some liquid blends… Questions? …or time for some liquid blends…