Hurricane

Team Leads: 

Xuejin Zhang 
Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, 
(NOAA/OAR), Miami, FL 

Zhan Zhang 
Environmental Modeling Center, 
(NOAA/NWS/NCEP),
College Park, MD

The UFS R2O hurricane modeling sub-project main effort will focus on the development of the next generation hurricane forecast system;  the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS).

The main activities for this sub-project include:

  1. Operational upgrade and maintenance of the Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) model & Hurricanes in a Multi-scale Ocean coupled Non-hydrostatic (HMON) model. Different possible configurations (storm-centric, basin-wide) for HWRF, HMON and HAFS will be tested and chosen based on improvements in forecast skill and available production compute resources.
  2. Continue development of Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS) data assimilation (HAFS-DA, hereafter) including TC initialization, atmosphere and ocean coupling, physics upgrades, and adding telescopic moving nests. These will be primarily driven and leveraged by Hurricane Supplemental resources and timelines.
  3. JEDI implementation for HAFS-DA; this will also be leveraged with Hurricane Supplemental funded tasks for JEDI development facilitated by code sprints and in conjunction with FV3-CAM and FV3-Global DA advancements.
  4. Conduct real time HFIP experiments for HAFS, HWRF & HMON including ensembles.

Upgrade and maintain the operational hurricane models (HWRF and HMON), and develop the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS) data assimilation, including Tropical Cyclone (TC) initialization, atmosphere and ocean coupling, physics upgrades, telescopic moving nests. 

  • Reduce TC forecast guidance errors, including during RI, by 50% from 2017
  • Produce 7-day forecast guidance as good as the 2017 5-day
  • Improve guidance on pre-formation disturbances, including genesis timing, and track and intensity forecasts, by 20% from 2017
  • Improve hazard guidance and risk communication, based on social and behavioral science, for actionable lead-times for storm surge and all other threats

  • *Transitioned HWRF and HMON for operational implementation (10/09/2020)

  • *Completed HFIP HAFS real-time demo (10/31/2021)

  • HAFS developments (with leveraging of Disaster Supplemental support):

  • Workflow
  • Coupling
  • Preprocessing/li>
  • Physics developments
  • HAFS initialization/DA
  • FY22 initial implementation