All seminars > Upcoming 2008 JCSDA Seminars

It is known that operational mesoscale forecast models do not perform well on propagating summer rainfall over the central United States. Such precipitation characteristics are coupled with subsynoptic-scale perturbations embedded in the midtropospheric flows. Analysis of the North American Mesoscale model (NAM) forecasts found that the model tends to generate the perturbations with a propagation speed that is too slow. The speed bias results in displaced rainfall forecasts.

The GFS assimilation of FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC data in an experimental run during summer 2006 was evaluated. The diagnostic analysis was focused on the global stationary wave structure in the Northern Hemisphere. Results show that large impacts of the FORMOSAT- 3/COSMIC observations are mainly distributed over the major mountain ranges and the western tropical Pacific warm pool. Water vapor flux convergence is found to be enhanced over the warm pool region, resulting in more precipitation in the GFS forecasts.

Over the past 10 years, and most likely for the next 10 years, the Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) community has faced, and will be facing, an unprecedented volume of new satellite data available for assimilation into NWP forecast systems. Simultaneously, the NCEP Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) is redesigning the operational suite of forecast systems, aka the NCEP Production Suite, to provide improved information to users and, simultaneously, a software suite capable of supporting a broader diversity of forecast models. This seminar will present a strategic path for the future wherein all these factors are considered.