EMC Synergy Meeting Highlights January 31, 2005

This meeting was led by Peter Manousos and attended by Eric Rogers, Dave Plummer, Jim Hoke, Ken Campana, Mary Hart, Kevin McCarthy, Daniel Pawlak, Joe Sienkiewicz, Keith Brill, Ed Danaher, Stephen Jascourt, and Bill Bua. Additionally, AWC’s Steven Silberberg and SPC’s Steve Weiss, Greg Grosshans, and Dave Bright attended by teleconference.

1. CCS

Although NCO PMB was unable to attend, the following notes from the 2/1/05 IBM meeting were compiled by Mary Hart. “The Blue/White switchover is going as planned & the backup production on Frost will stop running next week.  As of 02/08 12Z, there will be no more production running on Frost & IBM will be preparing to take Frost down for its upgrade.  If HPC, CPC, or any other centers still have production-related jobs running on Frost/Snow they need to contact Wayman Baker (the COTR) about getting IBM to transfer them over to White/Blue. As of 02/08, Frost/Snow becomes the NOAA R&D cluster under the control of Steve Lord & Kevin Cooley.  The main users will be the Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA), Climate Forecast group, and Numerical Modeling Test Bed Group (THORPEX, NCAR test center).  IBM has tentatively scheduled the Frost upgrade for 02/08 to 03/21.  If IBM happens to finish faster, they'll bring Frost back up early.  After Frost is upgraded, Snow will be taken down for its 6-week upgrade.”

2. Notes from EMC

a. Global Modeling Group: Ken Campana reported the following intended upgrades to be tested in parallel by the end of February and targeted to become operational by the end of March (per evaluation/feedback by users on retrospective runs from May, Aug, and Sept 2004):

· Upgrade in resolution to T382L64 (~ 35km horizontal resolution) to f180, T190L64 beyond f180

· Upgrade surface parameterization scheme including improvements in sea ice and the NOAH land surface model package

· Improvements to vertical diffusion and mountain blocking will be tested but are not certain to be included in the implementation

· Production of a variety of new surface parameters (such as snow depth)

· Inclusion of new data sets ingested by GDAS (AMSU-a and AIRES)

b. Mesoscale Modeling Group: Eric Rogers reported a WRF-NMM parallel run (12km horizontal resolution over the North American domain out to f84) cycling on itself is planned to begin experimentally by the end of February with the intent for evaluation by spring. Additionally, the final changes to the Eta/NAM are planned for operational implementation by the end of March (per evalution of users) and include the following:

a. Clouds allowed to be optically thicker (e.g., dense clouds block out more sun) and increase in shallow clouds (presently small cloud cover becomes more moderate)

b. Land/surface model improvements including higher resolution soil and vegetation type data sets

c. Snow emissivity (decreased by 5%) to address cold surface bias

d. Precipitation assimilation will discontinue building in moisture and hydrometeors where model guess has none but observations show precip

e. EDAS changes to it’s 3DVar, including ingest of Level 2.5 NEXRAD wind data (though can’t be utilized until after new NEXRAD build expected in June to fix build 6 bug that sends incorrect coordinates for the data) and a 2d-var analysis using surface temperature observations

f. Visibility will account for convective precipitation rate (presently, visibility is not reduced where model is producing convective precip)

Overall, changes somewhat reduce nocturnal cold bias over snowcover and improve positioning of arctic fronts, but only partly solves these problems

b. Global Ensemble Prediction System: No report.

c. Short Range Ensemble Prediction System: No report

d. Marine Modeling and Analysis Branch (MMAB): No report

3. Input from NCEP Centers

a. AWC – Inquired to EMC Meso group on the possibility of obtaining NAM at 64 km resolution and for a change in the upper limit from 70mb to 100mb for top level max wind speed checks. AWC also inquired to the Global group on the latter and the possibility of obtaining the Marine Modeling and Analysis Branch global visibility product as post processed grids in the GFS output, and will inquire to the SREF group on the availability of specific parameters in the post processed output.

b. OPC – Will inquire to NCO about the 1x1 degree ECMWF availability in GEMPAK format.

c. SPC – Inquired to EMC on the availability of GEMPAK grids for the upcoming evaluations. EMC responded that NCO will provide this information in the formal evaluation announcement.

4. The next meeting will be held Monday Feb 28^th, 2005 at noon in room 209.