WCD-12. Assessing Physics Innovations for the Unified Forecast System

Abstract
The Unified Forecast System (UFS) is a comprehensive, community-developed Earth modeling system, designed as both a research tool and as the basis for NOAA’s operational forecasts. In order to improve the skill of operational forecast models, NOAA recently funded the UFS-Research-to-Operations (R2O) Project with the dual goals of developing modeling innovations suitable for R2O transition and broadening the access and usage of the UFS. The UFS-R2O physics subproject enables physics developers and scientists to actively engage in the development process and ensures the improvements will be properly implemented in the UFS. The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC), which has the overarching goal of making the numerical weather prediction R2O pipeline more efficient, participates in this process by conducting testing and evaluation (T&E) of physics innovations. This poster will showcase a T&E activity conducted by the National Weather Service Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) and DTC, aiming at investigating the systematic biases in the operational GFSv16 physics suite and assessing the forecast skill using the gravity wave physics innovations. The evaluation used global retrospective runs conducted by EMC and Global Systems Laboratory (GSL). The operational physics suite was evaluated using 74 forecasts, spanning the period from July 2019 to Jun 2020, alternating between 00 and 12 UTC initializations using a forecast length of 10 days. The preliminary gravity wave physics evaluation used seven forecasts with forecast lengths of 8 to 10 days. Along with conventional objective verification of the global forecast performance, additional in-depth diagnostics conducted by DTC will be demonstrated with an emphasis on the assessment of surface fluxes due to their importance on the representation of clouds, surface energy budget, and their interactions with other aspects of the model physics.