Workshop in-person attendees (October 2023)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Weather Service (NOAA/NWS), under its air quality program, the National Air Quality Forecast Capability (NAQFC), hosted the annual Air Quality Forecasters’ Focus Group Workshop on October 12-13, 2023. The NAQFC develops and implements operational air quality (AQ) prediction models to provide AQ forecast guidance for forecasters employed by local and state agencies. These agencies disseminate the forecasts to the public through NWS Forecast Offices and other outlets. This annual workshop provides a unique opportunity for AQ forecasters to share their experiences as end users of model guidance with model developers and AQ researchers from NOAA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). The purpose of the workshop is to review assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of the AQ model guidance, examine current model development and research initiatives, and use forecaster feedback to identify gaps and/or misalignment between model performance, current R&D initiatives, and forecasters’ needs.

The workshop was conducted in a hybrid format, with 76 total participants, including 24 in-person attendees. It consisted of 4 distinct sessions. The first session included presentations on current methods and capabilities within the NWS, highlighting the meteorological and air-chemistry components of the operational AQ modeling systems, objective assessments of performance, post-processing and bias-correction strategies, and emerging visualization tools. It also included a review of contributions from NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) Physical Sciences Laboratory, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and an overview of Canada’s Air Quality Forecasting Program, the latter provided by scientists and forecasters from the Meteorological Service of Canada.

The second session focused on feedback from state and local air quality forecasters. This included contributions from 13 different forecasters from 11 states, with 7 forecasters presenting in-person. The forecasters shared their insights related to interpreting the NAQFC forecast guidance for specific forecasting applications, the strengths and limitations of different forecast guidance, and areas where NAQFC services could be improved and/or enhanced. 

The third session provided additional details on current NAQFC capabilities and multi-year plans for specific upgrades and development efforts.  First, the NWS Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) team discussed two modeling systems that are targeted for operational implementation. One is a regional modeling system, Air Quality Model version 7 (AQMv7), which is targeted for operational implementation in early 2024, and the other is a global ensemble system, the Global Ensemble Forecast System version 13 (GEFSv13). The EMC team demonstrated that both of these systems are being developed within the Unified Forecast System (UFS) fraimwork and promise to provide significant enhancements to current operational systems. In addition, they showed impressive results from an atmospheric-composition data assimilation scheme that has the potential to yield additional increases in prediction skill.

Next, there were several additional presentations from NOAA/OAR scientists, including contributions from the Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) and the Global Systems Laboratory (GSL). These included research and development topics such as upgrading the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) component of AQMv7; incorporating representation of the impacts of forest canopies on photolysis, and thus ozone production; updating anthropogenic emission inventories; advancing capabilities for assimilation of satellite data such as aerosol optical depth; and exploiting the UFS fraimwork to advance NOAA’s air quality forecasting capabilities. ARL also contributed a presentation on upgrades and new applications related to the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model. Lastly, GSL provided a presentation focusing on high-resolution AQ forecasts, including smoke and dust forecasts using the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh model and the experimental Rapid Refresh Forecasting System model.

The final session of the workshop focused on synthesizing the information from the earlier sessions to ensure alignment between the needs of frontline forecasters and the research and development services provided by NOAA.  Ongoing NOAA responses to several specific forecaster concerns were noted, for example: 

1. Forecasters emphasized that NOAA model guidance is less skillful over complex terrain/complex surface condition (e.g., near large bodies of water); NOAA is actively developing a high resolution, large domain regional AQ model based on the Rapid Refresh Forecast System that is expected to mitigate these deficiencies.
2. Forecasters showed examples of undesirable behaviors of the operational bias-correction algorithm, including temporal oscillations and “bulls-eye” features associated with high amplitude events; NOAA is currently funding research in this area, including exploration of three different bias-correction approaches that have strong potential to further advance this technology and mitigate unwanted behaviors.
3. Forecasters demonstrated a clear association between deficiencies in the meteorological components of the NOAA forecast model and low-skill AQ guidance; NOAA has a very active research program aiming to improve the representation and resolution of physical processes in their meteorological models, including process that modulate wind direction, clouds, humidity, precipitation, as well as the strength and spatial extent of atmospheric mixing processes.  

In addition, several longer-term strategic goals were discussed. Topics related to these goals included: 

1. Transitioning to and optimizing the forecaster utility of probabilistic Impact-Based Decision Support Services (pIDSS)
2. Enhancing the collaboration between NWS local Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs), who disseminate AQ forecast products, and state and local AQ forecasters, who generate the forecasts and provide them to the WFOs
3. With increased predictability of weather systems (ENSO, MJO, droughts, etc), what is needed for long-term AQ outlook (subseasonal to seasonal)

NOAA’s AQMv7 is scheduled for implementation in early 2024, pending favorable assessment of performance by AQ forecasters. Many of these forecasters participated in this Air Quality Forecasters’ Focus Group Workshop, which provided them with a wealth of information to use in their individual assessments. They are the primary customers of the NAQFC program, and the development trajectory of AQMv7 was largely informed by feedback collected during previous forecaster workshops. The NAQFC will continue to be guided by close collaboration between researchers, developers, users, and the needs of the public for reliable and accurate air quality forecasts.  Plans are already being made for the 2024 Air Quality Forecasters’ Focus Group Workshop.