NOAA has selected Brian Gross, Ph.D., as the director of NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) in College Park, Maryland. EMC is a leader in the field of earth system model development in the United States. The center delivers foundational guidance used by forecasters to produce life-saving watches and warnings for significant environmental and weather events. EMC is one of nine centers that comprise NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP).

“Brian’s depth of expertise in model development and vision for the future of community modeling come at a critically important time for NOAA,” said David Novak, Ph.D., acting NCEP director. “The upgrade of the GFS with the FV3 dynamic core is on the horizon, and having Brian at the helm ensures the right leader is in place to deliver this essential new tool to forecasters nationwide.”

In 2019, EMC will implement the new FV3 dynamic core, replacing the “engine” of the Global Forecast System (GFS), which is the cornerstone for NOAA’s operational production suite of numerical guidance. EMC leverages the best science from across the modeling community and puts it into operations as the foundation for the weather forecast.

Gross, 57, served in the role of acting EMC director from November 2017 to July 2018. Before joining EMC, he was the deputy director of NOAA's High Performance Computing and Communications office in NOAA’s Office of the Chief Information Officer. Prior to that, Gross was the deputy director of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) for 13 years. He has also served as head of GFDL’s software development group and as a research scientist there, modeling weather and climate with an emphasis on storm tracks.