NOAA Goes Live With New Forecasting Supercomputers

I'm actually an HWRF developer and you are correct that the summary was wrong. Our innermost domain is 3km, at a size of around 600x600km, intended to resolve the storm's inner core region (the area with the dangerous winds and, typically, largest rainfall). It is within a larger 1100x1100km 9km resolution domain, for resolving the nearby environment, and there is a gigantic 7500x7500 km, 27km resolution domain to resolve large-scale systems that drive the track. Also, the 3km resolution is not just needed to resolve convection: you need it to resolve some of the processes involved in intensity change, and in concentration of the wind maximum, such as double eyewalls, mesovortices, hot towers, and vorticity sheets. The GFS is our boundary condition, and part of our initial condition. We tried using ECMWF instead as an experiment, but that causes mixed results on track, and worse intensity. The intensity issues are likely due to their model's lack of skill at intensity prediction and primitive ocean model. (GFS has better hurricane intensity than ECMWF, despite having lower resolution!) ECMWF also has completely different physics and dynamics that ours, which results in larger shocks at the boundary.

You can see a better description of our model on our website:

http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/index.php?branch=HWRF [noaa.gov]

and if you're interested in running HWRF yourself, you can do that too, though it will be another week or two before the new 2013 version is publically available. HWRF is an open source model, put out by the NOAA Developmental Testbed Center (DTC), which handles the public distribution and community support. (Support of HWRF installations in other countries' forecast centers is generally handled through the NOAA Environmental Modeling Center (EMC).) Here is the webpage for user support and downloads:

http://www.dtcenter.org/HurrWRF/users/overview/hwrf_overview.php [dtcenter.org]

As for your point about improved resolution not helping the GFS, that's not true, especially in the case of hurricanes. The resolution of the GFS (~27km) is so low that it cannot even resolve the structure of most storms, let alone see the complex features involved in predicting intensity, rainfall or the finer points of track. When it can resolve the storm, such as with Superstorm Sandy, it has intensity skill competitive with regional models. The upcoming GFS upgrades to 13km and later 9km resolution (~2-4 years away) will allow the model to get a good idea of the basic structure of the storm, and start having real skill at predicting intensity, even for smaller storms. That, in turn, will help the HWRF and GFDL regional hurricane models improve their track and intensity prediction since they both rely on GFS for initial and boundary conditions.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/1ykN6dgXv7w/story01.htm

Adam Lanza cnbc Sandy Hook Victims columbine Newton virginia tech shooting China