NOAA’s flagship weather model — the Global Forecast System (GFS) — is undergoing a significant upgrade today to include a new dynamical core called the Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere (FV3).
NOAA’s flagship weather model — the Global Forecast System (GFS) — is undergoing a significant upgrade today to include a new dynamical core called the Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere (FV3). This upgrade will drive global numerical weather prediction into the future with improved forecasts of severe weather, winter storms, and tropical cyclone intensity and track.
NOAA research scientists originally developed the FV3 as a tool to predict long-range weather patterns at time frames ranging from multiple decades to interannual, seasonal and subseasonal. In recent years, creators of the FV3 at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory expanded it to also become the engine for NOAA’s next-generation operational GFS.
“In the past few years, NOAA has made several significant technological leaps into the future – from new satellites in orbit to this latest weather model upgrade,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “Through the use of this advanced model, the dedicated scientists, forecasters, and staff at NOAA will remain ever-alert for any threat to American lives and property.”
The FV3-based GFS brings together the superior dynamics of global climate modeling with day-to-day reliability and speed of operational numerical weather prediction. Additional enhancements to the science that produce rain and snow in the GFS also contribute to the improved forecasting capability of this upgrade.
Read more at: NOAA
A supercell thunderstorm in Kansas May 27, 2019 (Photo credit: Mike Coniglio/NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory)
