The Uncoordinated Giant: Why U.S. Weather Research and Prediction are

Not Achieving their Potential

Cliff MassAtmospheric Sciences

University of WashingtonThe U.S. Weather Prediction Enterprise is very big but uncoordinated.

April Bulletin of the AMS

The U.S. Weather Prediction Enterprise Has Accomplished a Great Deal During

the Past Decades

Dramatic Improvements in Numerical Weather Prediction

Large Advances in Weather Observation Technology

CamanoIslandWeatherRadar

Substantial Improvements in Weather Sensors

The Development of a Vigorous Private Sector

Aggressive Use of the Internet and other New Dissemination Approaches.

Substantial Advances in Understanding of Weather Systems

and Basic Processes.

But Even With These Advances We Have Accomplished Far Less Than Our Potential and in a Number of Areas the U.S. Have Lost World Leadership

This talk will suggest that our progress has been undermined by the inability of the major sectors of the weather prediction community to work together effectively.

Warning Signs• The skill of the GFS, the main U.S. global weather

prediction model, lags that of others (e.g., ECMWF).

500 mb Height--24h

The U.S. Weather Research Program—whose goal was to coordinate and support the nation’s

weather research--is essentially dead, ended by a lack of funding, vision, and interest.

Warning Signs• Major deficiencies exist in key forecast model

parameterizations (e.g., planetary boundary layer, microphysics) and there is minimal community coordination and joint research to deal with them.

• Disturbingly, the intellectual resources needed to deal with such major problems are declining. (How many PBL researchers are in our department now versus 30 years ago?)

Warning Signs

Although weather prediction is essentially probabilistic, the community has held to a deterministic paradigm, failing to provide our users with critical probabilistic information.

A new forecast preparation/dissemination approach (IFPS) was developed by the NWS

that is completely deterministic and which burdens forecasters with producing single renditions of

reality every six hours for seven days.

Exact Forecasts Out Several Days at Every Location!

Starving Probabilistic Prediction

• U.S. efforts to create short-term, mesoscale ensembles have been underfunded and inadequate.

• Virtually no post-processing of ensembles to produce reliable probabilistic forecasts (pdfs)

The Communication Deficit• There has been virtually no research on how to

best communicate weather information.• Current icons are inconsistent and often irrational.• Icons and other approaches are used with little

understanding of how people interpret them.

Iconology

And what does probability of precipitation really mean?

A large proportion of the population doesn’t really know.

Short-Term Forecasting: Our Greatest Failing

• With improving radar, mesonets, short-term NWP, and physical understanding, meteorologists know a great deal of what is happening now and during the next few hours….that is not communicated.

• Example: radar and MM5 indicate a profound rain-shadow that will persist for the remainder of the day. NWS and media provide forecast of “scattered showers”

• There has never been as much discrepancy between what meteorologists know and what information the public gets.

Example 2: Puget Sound Rain Shadow

Camano Island Radar 1-h Precip. Total

High Resolution MM5 Does Very Well With Rainshadows

NWS Forecasts Miss It Completely

WAZ006>008-062330-EVERETT AND VICINITY-SEATTLE METROPOLITAN AREA-TACOMA AREA-INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...EVERETT... EDMONDS... LYNNWOOD...MARYSVILLE...ARLINGTON...SEATTLE...BELLEVUE...FEDERAL WAY... KENT...RENTON…TACOMA ...LAKEWOOD... PUYALLUP...SUMNER330 AM PST SUN NOV 6 2005

.TODAY...SHOWERS LIKELY. HIGHS IN THE UPPER 40S. SOUTHWEST WIND 10 TO 20 MPH. TEMPERATURE / PRECIPITATION

EDMONDS 49 40 47 / 60 60 60 EVERETT 48 40 45 / 60 60 60 SEATTLE 48 41 46 / 60 60 60 BELLEVUE 49 41 48 / 60 60 60 PUYALLUP 49 40 47 / 60 60 60 TACOMA 48 39 46 / 60 60 60

Increasing Tensions Among the Weather Enterprise

• Tensions have developed among the community, particularly at the interface between the private and governmental sectors.

• The private sector feels that the NWS is invading their territory with Internet and wireless delivery, and is providing “custom forecasts” to potential clients.

• A group of private sector companies convinced Senator Rick Santorum to introduce legislation that would limit the NWS to warnings and collecting observations/NWP

Penn. SenatorSantorum(a.k.a., the Senator from Accuweather)

And Other Tensions

• NCAR and NCEP over the development of a new national mesoscale model (WRF)

Inefficient and Poorly Organized Research Structure in NOAA

• The government research laboratories that are tasked to supply new scientific and technical advances for the NWS are OUTSIDE of the organization, under NOAA’s Office of Atmospheric and Oceanographic Research

• Without direct management by the “user” agency and with research tasks balkanized over many labs, the research agenda has been inefficient, developing technologies that are unneeded or redundant, and not dealing with acute problems.

Lack of Critical Mass: Too Many Weather Prediction Models

• NWS NCEP: Eta, GFS, Regional Spectral, WRF-NMM

• Navy: COAMPS, NOGAPS, NORAPS• NCAR: MM5, WRF-ARW• Oklahoma: ARPS• Colorado: RAMS• MESO Inc: MASS model• …and several more!

Too Many Models

• Some competition is good, and we don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket, but we have clearly divided the community between too many modeling systems for our own good.

• The NWS and universities have generally used different models. Eta has been the main mesoscale model for the NWS, MM5 (and now WRF) for the academic community. A real problem for the transfer of research results to operations.

The WRF Model Saga

• The WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model was conceived as a way to bring the academic and operational communities together under one model infrastructure for mesoscale prediction.

• Plug compatible physics would be easy to switch and test.

• Completely new model with better, numerics, clean code and easily parallelized.

Same Pronunciation

The Reality• The NWS and NCAR went in separate directions with different

dynamic cores.– NWS: NMM core– NCAR/Universities: ARW core

• The plug compatible physics that would allow various cores to use the same physics has not panned out.

• The infrastructure…the software framework that it all works in has proven difficult to modify and understand.

• Decision making has been limited to NCAR and a few Federal agencies.

• NWS and NCAR going separate ways on data assimilation

These Issues Have Developed at the Same Time as the

U.S. Meteorological Community Has

Experienced Great Structural Changes

Structural Changes

• The private sector has grown rapidly and stands as an equal to the government and academic sectors.

• The National Weather Service is now a much smaller piece of the pie.

• The boundaries between the sectors have become more diffuse.

The Boundaries Are Fading

• All sectors now do NWP• All sectors disseminate information to the public

– (even the universities through their web pages and involvement with the media—e.g., Penn. State produced weather page in the NY Times)

• All sectors are involved in data collection. • Such overlap is really a very healthy development,

promoting creativity and cross-fertilization, assuming it does not lead to conflict and tensions.

Still a Giant• We (the U.S.) still have many things going for us:

– The world’s largest meteorological academic community.

– The largest and most successful private sector community.

– The largest governmental research community.– Demonstrated great creativity.

• But we have not effectively combined our resources…both intellectual and financial…to make the rapid progress of which we are capable.

• Often overseas competitors take our technologies and beat us to operational implementation (e.g., 4DVAR)

A Number of Groups Have Realized We Have a Problem

Pielke and Carbone 2002• The goals of the weather prediction

enterprise “are unlikely to be reached if the community proceeds in a balkanized fashion that has characterized it in the past.”

• “No organization or entity has embraced the collective measure of responsibility for improving forecast processes.”

National Research Council: 1998 Report on the Future of the Atmospheric Sciences

“Today, there is reason for considerable concern about planning for atmospheric research. No one sets the priorities; no one fashions the agenda…. Thus, BASC believe that a national research environment requires a strong disciplinary planning mechanism. ... all partners in the atmospheric enterprise –in government, in universities, and in a variety of commercial undertakings– must join together as an effective team focused on the future.”

NRC FairWeather Report (2003)

• Suggests that the various components of the Weather Enterprise needs to work together more effectively.

• Provides some potential approaches (e.g., AMS set up a neutral arbiter)

Weather Coalition: Private Sector/University “Lobbying Group” for the Enterprise

New AMS Commission on the Weather Enterprise

Community Meeting on the Weather Enterprise (July 2005)

How Do We Fix the

Problem?

Some Concrete Suggestions

Reduce Tensions• NWS should establish an advisory committee that is

widely representative of the weather community and users

• NWS should amend its partnership policy not to support forecast products for specific industries or individuals unless dictated by law.

• The private sector must acknowledge the NWS needs to use modern communication technologies.

• The AMS Commission must expand its role to provide venues to discuss Weather Enterprise issues.

The Community Must Develop Better Mechanisms for Organizing and Coordinating

Development and Research for Operational and User Needs.

• What are the deficiencies of the current observing, modeling and data assimilation systems and how will the resources, both financial and personnel, be found to deal with them?

• How can duplication of effort be reduced?

One Approach: Expand the Role of the Developmental Test Center

The DTC• The DTC was set up as “a facility where the numerical

weather prediction research and operational communities will interact to accelerate testing and evaluation of new models and techniques both to improve the technology and for operational implementation. “

• Supported by a number of groups (NCAR, Air Force, NOAA, Navy) and is seen as a relatively neutral entity.

• Underfunded now, but could serve as the nucleus of a true community effort.

Major Components

• Establish an oversight board representative of the entire community.

• Would hold workshops on important mesoscale modeling topics

• Would establish active working groups on model physics, data assimilation, etc. that would prioritize and coordinate U.S. efforts.

Our Past

Our Future!

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves”

The End

The Northwest Example

• In the Pacific Northwest, a wide-ranging group of Federal, state and local agencies, academic institutions, and private sector entities have combined resources to build a regional weather prediction system, using both high resolution modeling (down to 4-km grid spacing) and mesoscale ensembles.

Northwest Modeling Consortium• National Weather Service • University of Washington • USDA Forest Service • Port of Seattle • United States Navy • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency • Washington State Department of Ecology • Puget Sound Clean Air Agency • Washington State Department of Natural Resources • Washington State Department of Transportation •  Seattle City Light

• KING TV

The Northwest• Resources are pooled and decisions are made as a

group. • It took a few years of intense discussion for the

various sectors to understand and trust each other, but this was achieved with very positive results.

• Working together the group has also created a wide range of innovative applications in Transportation Weather, Hydrology, Air Quality Forecasting, and other areas.

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