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Forecast Research
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Demonstration Division

Systems Development
Division

Aviation Division

Modernization Division

International Division

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The division comprises four branches:

Aviation Requirements and Applications Branch – Defines requirements for generating and disseminating aviation weather products; develops the capability to assess the quality of products generated automatically and by aviation weather forecasters, and the "guidance" forecasters use to generate those products.

Aviation Systems: Development and Deployment Branch – Manages enhancement, testing, fielding, and supporting of advanced meteorological workstations for the NWS Aviation Weather Center (AWC); develops Aviation Digital Data Service (ADDS) Web products (Figure 57) for use by the aviation community.

Advanced Computing Branch – Assures the continuing improvement of high-resolution numerical weather analysis and prediction systems through research and development in high-performance computing.

Forecast Verification Branch – Develops verification techniques, mainly focusing on aviation weather forecasts, and tools that allow forecasters, researchers, developers, and program leaders to generate and display statistical information in near real time using the Real-Time Verification System (RTVS).

In addition to its own activities, the Aviation Division provides funds for other FSL divisions to assist in achieving these goals.

The branch serves as the focal point for coordinating activities with the FAA Aviation Weather Research Program (AWRP) and the U.S. Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA), organizations which fund the development efforts. Two other functions involve leading the AWRP Product Development Team for Aviation Forecasts and Quality Assessment (AF&QA;), and facilitating projects that provide the Air Force with globally relocatable, high-resolution atmospheric analyses (using the Air Force’s global datasets).

Assistance was also provided to the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center in preparing for an evaluation of the utility of ADDS as an interactive visual component of weather briefings for General Aviation (GA) pilots provided via telephone by FAA Flight Service Stations.

In preparation for prototyping advanced products for TMUs at the Fort Worth ARTCC, FX-Connect workstations were implemented and tested at the Fort Worth CWSU and NWS Weather Forecast Office (WFO). Staff also set up these workstations to display map backgrounds relevant to aviation operations, a graphical version of Convective SIGMETs, and the automated National Convective Weather Forecast (NCWF) product, which was recently developed by the FAA Product Development Team for Convection and declared operational by the FAA and NWS.

The FX-Connect systems will access AWIPS data from the prototype AWIPS server at the NWS Aviation Weather Center in Kansas City. FX-Connect enables forecasters at various locations and on various computer platforms to view concurrently and in real time basic AWIPS weather displays; invoke basic workstation functions such as animating, zooming, and overlaying; and collaboratively generate (in real time) free-hand and icon-based graphical products. This system can be readily adapted to ingest local data and display output generated by advanced algorithms and forecast models. It is also ideal for rapid prototyping because it resides outside of the AWIPS firewall, thus providing the flexibility to make rapid enhancements.

FSL collaborated with the Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) and the Global Weather Center (GWC) to provide software systems, meteorological science, and systems integration support for the development of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) community model.

FSL’s technology has been an important part of the Air Force’s re-engineering program. The Range Standardization and Automation (RSA) system will serve the needs of launch weather support, daily operations, range safety, and other activities. The RSA project involves other FSL technology transfer tasks that have been funded by Lockheed-Martin. FSL has developed a version of the AWIPS workstation to be deployed at the launch support sites at Cape Kennedy, Florida; Patrick Air Force Base, Florida; and the Western Launch Range weather support unit at Vandenberg AFB, California.

Additional program development activities were begun with private partners, such as Lockheed Martin, involving the WorldWide Weather Workstation (W4) and FX-Net systems.

Regarding the GPS-IPW program development, a collaboration was established with the GPS Positioning group at Schriever AFB, Colorado, the DOT Federal Highways Administration (FHWA) and their Intelligent Transportation Systems.

A key task will be to enable ADDS to conform to criteria for reliability, accessibility, security and archiving set forth by the FAA in order to qualify as an approved provider of weather information over the Internet. The criterion for archiving requires reproducing the specific data requested by individual users for at least 15 days following the request. To meet this recommendation, all products will be archived and each product request and ADDS response will be recorded. It will not be feasible for ADDS (also the case for other Internet-based aviation weather systems) to ascertain if users receive or look at the products.

Operational and software documentation will be prepared to assist AWC staff in fully supporting ADDS by familiarizing AWC with ADDS software and hardware. Plans are to implement the same development environment at AWC that NCAR and FSL use, thereby ensuring that any "fixes" that AWC makes have a path to future versions.

Prototype products for the Fort Worth TMU will be generated by a Web server at FSL that ingests automated and/or value-added forecasts from the FX-Connect system at the Fort Worth ARTCC, and generates images of prototype forecasts for display on the existing Web browser at the TMU. The images will include the prototype forecasts and "official" Convective SIGMETs or CCFPs, as appropriate.

An FX-Connect workstation will be implemented at the Houston, Texas, CWSU, which will enable FSL to evaluate the utility of real-time collaboration between the Fort Worth and Houston CWSUs.

Finally, the software required to display prototype inflight icing products will be prepared during fall 2002. The initial product will focus on the Current Icing Potential (CIP) and the automated Integrated Icing Forecast Algorithm (IIFA) in context with conventional AIRMETs and SIGMETs for icing.

• DOD, NOAA’s Space Environment Center, and the National Geodetic Survey – to develop an integrated, high accuracy, real-time positioning and navigation model.
  
• DOT, Federal Highways Adiminstration, and the Intelligent Transportation Systems program – to integrate their National Differential GPS (NDGPS) network into FSL’s existing GPS-IPW network for the purpose of increasing the density of the IPW observing system.
  
• NOAA/NWS – to provide GPS-IPW education and additional data to forecasters and Science Operation Officers (SOOs) to increase the use and understanding of the dataset.
  
• DOD – to utilize the FSL-developed FX-Net compression techniques for gridded data transmission for DOD operational weather systems, the Integrated Meteorological System (IMETS) and the Global Theater Weather Analysis and Prediction System (GTWAPS).
  
• DOD – to utilize the Graphical Forecast Editor (GFE) applications in the DOD forecast workstations.

FSL will increase efforts to create new collaborations with other domestic and international research and operational groups in the private sector, government, and educational institutions that can utilize mature technologies developed at FSL. Other outreach plans in support of program development include finding additional venues for systems demonstrations and technical presentations and developing a Website that highlights collaborative project opportunities at FSL.

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A secondary goal of the ADDS is to rapidly release new and improved aviation weather products to the aviation community. The ADDS meets this goal by involving the user at an early stage in the development cycle. User feedback from the ADDS Advanced User Group, the ADDS Forum, and e-mail determines design decisions and product usability. This means that end-users are involved in the requirements phase and determine whether a product is useful by accessing it during the experimental portion of the development cycle. The end-user determines the needs and when they have been met.

The branch continues to work jointly with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the Aviation Weather Center to add functionality and support the ADDS Website. The ADDS is funded through the Aviation Forecast and Quality Assessment (AF&QA;) Product Development Team by the FAA Aviation Weather Research Program.

Work continues with the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (the Volpe Center, funds ETMS) in integrating new aviation-tailored weather products on the Aircraft Situation Display and upgrading the Aviation Weather Network to handle the latest improvements to the Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) gridded datasets. The RUC grids are used to create displays for the Traffic Situation Display and provide automation support for strategic planning of the National Airspace System. The RUC model, developed at FSL, is tailored for the aviation community.

The Traffic Management Unit project supports two goals: 1) establish procedures for generating automated guidance products, and 2) share common datasets among operational aviation forecasters at different locales, and demonstrate how the employment of collaborative forecasting methodologies can lead to significant improvements in the accuracy and consistency of NWS-generated aviation forecast products. Accomplishing these objectives will in the end produce a more efficient use of the National Airspace System, greater safety to the airline customer, and cost savings to the aviation community.

The branch continues to work with the Modernization Division and forecasters from the Dallas-Fort Worth Center Weather Service Unit at defining, developing, and deploying automated forecast products to be used by traffic managers at the Dallas-Fort Worth ARTCC. The Traffic Management Unit project is funded through the AF&QA; Product Development Team by the FAA Aviation Weather Research Program.

• Convective SIGMETs
  
• Convective Outlooks
  
• National Convective Weather Forecast
  
• National Convective Detection Product
  
• National Convective Detection Motion Vectors and Cloud heights
  
• Collaborative Convective Forecast Product
  
• VOR (VHF Omnidirectional Range) maps
  
• Jet Route maps
  
• ZFW TRACON scale and map background
  
• ZFW ARTCC scale
  
• ZHU TRACON scale and map background
  
• ZHU ARTCC scale.

The Linux-based AWIPS 5.2.2 automated image software has been updated to handle sizing of jpeg images, color changes to map backgrounds through the use of the AWIPS configuration files, and zooming. A Website was created for disseminating the real-time data products created for the ARTCC traffic managers at the Dallas-Fort Worth ARTCC, http://tmu.fsl.noaa.gov/.

The Flight Path Tool will be converted into an application for faster user response. New satellite images will be created to cover most of the world. Also, plans are to add radar images, the Collaborative Convective Forecast Product along with convective outlook products, and a new ceiling and visibility page.

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Using SMS, parallelism is added to a Fortran program by inserting directives in the form of Fortran comments. SMS then automatically translates this source code into parallel source code, inserting calls to SMS subroutines that perform interprocess communication and other parallel operations as needed. Since the directives are comments, a single source code can be maintained for both serial and parallel machines. Also, automatic source code translation allows complexity to be hidden from users to a greater degree than more traditional subroutine-based approaches.

The SMS subroutines form a software layer between the prediction model’s source code and Message Passing Interface (MPI), the industry standard for interprocessor communication. This layered approach provides SMS users with ease of use, minimal impact to their source code, portability, and high performance. Source codes that include SMS directives are fully portable to most high-performance computers, Unix workstations, and symmetric multiprocessors (SMPs). SMS subroutines provide high-performance scalable I/O supporting both native and portable file formats. Also, data ordering in files is independent of the number of processors used. Further, since parallel operations are implemented as a layered set of routines, machine-dependent optimizations have been made inside SMS without impacting the model source code. SMS also supports many user-specified optimizations. For example, the execution of redundant computations to avoid time-consuming interprocessor communication will reduce run times in some cases. SMS also provides tools to assist in testing and debugging of parallel programs.

Several atmospheric and oceanic analysis and prediction models have been parallelized using SMS, including Quasi-nonhydrostatic (FSL), Rapid Update Cycle (FSL), Local Analysis and Prediction System (FSL), Regional Ocean Modeling System (Rutgers University/UCLA, Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory), Global Forecast System (Central Weather Bureau, Taiwan), Typhoon Forecast System (Central Weather Bureau, Taiwan), NALROM (Aeronomy Laboratory), Princeton Ocean Model (Environmental Technology Laboratory), Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (Los Alamos National Laboratory/University of Miami), and Eta (NCEP). Computer architectures supported by the SMS include the IBM SP2, Cray T3E, SGI Origin 3000, Sun E10000, HP Exemplar, Linux clusters (both Intel and Compaq Alpha), and other Unix workstations and SMPs.

SMS was used to parallelize 1) an atmospheric chemistry code (NALROM) for the Aeronomy Laboratory, 2) a version of the Princeton Ocean Model for the Environmental Technology Laboratory, and 3) the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model for Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The SMS parallel Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) was enhanced to support scientists at the Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory (PMEL). The branch supported users of SMS ROMS at Rutgers University, PMEL, Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, and New Zealand’s National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research.

The branch continued development and enhancement of the functionality and portability of the SMS, and updated documentation with each new release. The most significant newly developed features are additional runtime debugging tools, support for more flexible decompositions, and extended support for Fortran90 syntax. The performance of the SMS interprocess communications was improved; tests using MPI and SMS versions of NCEP’s Eta model showed the SMS version performance now exceeding NCEP’s hand-coded MPI version. Training on SMS was provided for scientists from NOAA and other organizations.

The branch continued development of the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model. In close collaboration with NCAR and others, they worked on the design and implementation of enhancements to the WRF I/O API, and on preliminary designs for a nesting API.

Support continued to be provided, as needed, for the parallel RUC and Quasi-Nonhydrostatic (QNH) models, for users of the High-Performance Computing System at FSL, and for the HPCS management team regarding hardware and software upgrades. Research results were published in conference proceedings of the Ninth European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts Workshop on the use of High-Performance Computing in Meteorology.

Collaborations began with NCEP to establish a Joint Modeling Testbed at FSL.

Parallelization of the fully nested version of the Typhoon Forecast System (TFS) for the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau was completed.

• Use SMS to parallelize a coupled POM-ice model for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
  
• Use SMS to parallelize other atmospheric and oceanic models as needed.
  
• Continue to develop and enhance SMS and to port it to new computer architectures.
  
• Continue to support users of SMS and of FSL’s High-Performance Computing System.
  
• Provide SMS user training.
  
• Continue to participate in the design and implementation of the WRF model.
  
• Continue collaboration with NCEP to establish a Joint Modeling Testbed at FSL.
  
• Publish results in conference proceedings and journals.
  
• Support acceptance testing and integration of the HPCS final upgrade.
  
• Support procurement activities for acquisition of FSL’s next HPCS.

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As part of the FSL strategic plan, the branch strives to maintain a strong verification program by working closely with other agencies, such as the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Research Applications Program, National Weather Service (NWS), and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The technology developed through these close interactions can benefit all agencies by building and strengthening the verification programs.

The RTVS has become an integral part of the Federal Aviation Administration Aviation Weather Research Program by providing a mechanism for monitoring and tracking the improvements of AWRP-sponsored forecast products. RTVS runs operationally at the AWC providing feedback directly to forecasters and managers in near real time.

Extensive verification activities supporting the transition of the National Convective Weather Forecast (NCWF) and the Integrated Icing Diagnosis Algorithm (IIDA) were completed. The results were used in the FAA/NWS decision process regarding whether to transfer the algorithm from an experimental phase to a fully operational weather product that would be supported by NWS.

The RTVS was modified and statistics were generated for three real-time objective intercomparison exercises, including turbulence, convection, and icing. The turbulence exercise was held from 8 February–31 March 2001, during which 14 algorithms over 5 domains at 2 different altitude bands were compared to the operational turbulence forecast (that is, AIRMETs). More information is available at the main RTVS Webpage, http://www-ad.fsl.noaa.gov/fvb/rtvs/index.html (Figure 60).

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