Regional to Global-scale Modeling Systems Research

Much of the Regional to Global-scale Modeling work done at CIRA is performed by approximately 20 CIRA researchers who are integrated into various collaborative research activities within the Global Systems Division (GSD) at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) in Boulder. They conduct research and development to provide NOAA and the nation with observing, prediction, computer, and information systems that deliver environmental products ranging from local to global predictions of short-range, high impact weather and air quality events to longer-term intra-seasonal climate forecasts.

CIRA researchers and scientists, in partnership with GSD, Global Monitoring Division (GMD), and Physical Sciences Division (PSD) scientists, conceive, design, and test the forecast impact of meteorological observing systems, with an emphasis on integrated observing systems employing a large range of measurement systems. They develop modeling and assimilation techniques and information systems to improve the short-range weather forecasting necessary for severe weather watches and warnings, heavy precipitation events, water management, air quality forecasting, and fire weather prediction. They develop the global Earth system modeling and assimilation techniques needed for global chemical transport and regional climate simulations.

Together with our partners at the NOAA ESRL, CIRA scientists and researchers investigate high-performance computer architectures to handle the enormous computational demands of environmental models and develop environmental information systems to support commerce, transportation, emergency management, and other societal needs. They support NOAA in high-performance computing through new computing technology and improved software engineering practices while investigating advanced computer architecture to handle the enormous computational demands of environmental models.

In other research, our scientists use models to improve the representation of clouds and land surface processes and to investigate the response of regional hydrology to global climate change. These impact studies help facilitate the development and enhancement of models for both operational forecasting and research applications. They help create tools that allow scientists to obtain more information from observations and simulated observations and conduct weather analysis, numerical forecasting, and ensemble forecasting.

RELATED PROJECTS

Projects in the Regional to Global scale Modeling research theme fall roughly under three categories related to Modeling, Advanced Computing, and Impact Studies.

  1. Modeling:  
  2. Advanced Computing:  
  3. Impact Studies:  

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

  • Rapid Refresh
    The Rapid Refresh (RAP) is an hourly updated weather forecast model/assimilation system that replaced the Rapid Updated Cycle (RUC) at NCEP as NOAA's hourly updated model on 1 May 2012. The RAP differs from the RUC in that it uses:
    • a RAP-unique version of the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model, a community mesoscale forecast model with strong contributions to its development from AMB,
    • an RAP-unique version of the Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) assimilation system, and
    • a larger domain covering all of North America.
  • High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR)
    The HRRR, a 3-km model initialized hourly with the ESRL-experimental version of the radar-enhanced 13-km RAP, provides unique radar-initialized hourly-updated, convection-resolving forecasts, and runs over a CONUS-wide domain.
  • FIM global model - Flow-following Finite-volume Icosahedral Model
    FIM is a new global atmospheric model that includes the use of the adaptive isentropic-sigma hybrid vertical coordinate successful with the RUC model, accurate finite-volume horizontal grid, and an icosahedral horizontal grid. ESRL collaborates with NCEP/EMC toward application of the FIM model in the NCEP ESMF framework.

    The Non-ydrostatice Icosahedral Model (NIM) is a next-generation global model that builds on the success of its predecessor FIM. Both FIM and NIM use the icosahedral horizontal grid and were designed to run efficiently on thousands of processors. NIM is being developed to run at cloud-resolving scales (3-4 km), and is being designed to run on GPUs, multi-core, and other architectures. The NIM model is divided into two basic components: dynamics and physics. NIM dynamics was developed by a team (comprised of several CIRA computer scientists) of modelers, software engineers, and parallelization experts with decades of experience in code development, parallelization, and optimization.
  • WRF-Chem model
    WRF-Chem is a next-generation coupled weather/air quality numerical prediction system based upon the WRF model. Gas-phase chemistry and aerosol processes are tightly coupled to meteorology within the WRF model structure. Since the model also includes the aerosol direct and indirect effect in addition to sophisticated microphysics packages, WRF-Chem can be used for process studies that are extremely relevant for global change predictions. WRF-Chem has a large international user base and, in addition to studying global change processes, is used to predict weather, dispersion, and air quality. ESRL/GSD currently runs inline chemistry versions for many of its models, including FIM-chem ,RR-chem ,and HRRR-chem , all with cycling of 3-d aerosol/chemistry variables.
  • Local Analysis and Prediction System (LAPS)
    LAPS is a data assimilation system that integrates data from virtually every meteorological observation system into a very high-resolution gridded framework centered on a forecast office's domain of responsibility.
  • Variational LAPS (Var-LAPS)
    Space and Time Meteorological Analysis System (STMAS) is a next generation data assimilation system designed to improve forecasts and analysis through the use of EnKF/4DVAR. It uses a multi-grid technique combining the advantages of EnKF and 4DVAR to reduce their limitations.
  • Advanced Computing
    The GSD advanced computing section (ACS) is a joint team of Federal and CIRA computer scientists who support modeling activities in GSD and explore new hardware and software technologies needed to run high resolution weather and climate models more quickly and accurately on High Performance Computing (HPC) systems. The ACS is currently exploring Graphical Processor Units (GPUs) for use in our weather models.
  • Weather Research & Forecast Model (WRF)
    The Weather Research and Forecast Model is a collaborative partnership to develop an advanced mesoscale forecast and assimilation system, and accelerate research advances into operational forecasting.
  • WRF Developmental Testbed Center (DTC)
    The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) is a facility where the NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction) research and operational communities interact to accelerate testing and evaluation of new models and techniques for research applications and operational implementation, without interfering with current operations.
  • WRF Portal
    WRF Portal is a Java Web Start GUI application that simplifies the configuring and running of WRF models. It includes the WRFSI GUI (Domain) Tool that allows one to graphically select/define the model domain.