1. National Blend of Global Models An Overview
Jeff Waldstreicher
NOAA/NWS Eastern Region HQ
Bohemia, NY
15th Northeast Regional Operational Workshop
November 12-13, 2014 – Albany, NY

2. Origins of the National Model Blend
REASONING
Local / Regional
Model Blend Initiatives
WRN Roadmap
NAPA Report
Local/Regional Initiatives:
Variety of regions and offices have been looking into ways to provide a better starting point for forecasters (BOIVerify – consensus models, CR Model Blend, etc)
WRN Roadmap:
Highlighted plans to proactively adopt new science & technology developments and leverage field innovation to enhance services and to implement continuous process improvement by identifying repeatable best practices to provide higher quality services
NAPA Report:
Recommended that we need to facilitate consistency and sharing of information, because the lack of consistency impedes the ability of our partners to use our data.
They interviewed staff who indicated that one challenge is that issues are “being addressed by geographically-focused offices without a means to effectively coordinate across the organization”
Sandy Supplemental:
large chunk of money available for mitigating the potential gap in POES data in the JPSS era
Variety of great projects were proposed and funded to mitigate the impacts of a potential gap, both at NWS and NESDIS
CR model blend was one such project -> "better use of existing model data" to mitigate a potential gap
funded as a way to explore expanding that tool across the country while ensuring it is a top performer
FUNDING
Sandy Supplemental
JPSS Gap Mitigation:
projects that make better use of existing model data

3. Early Roots in Regional Blends
Improvements in verification and consistency scores for the NWS National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD)
Operational Efficiencies
BUT…
Sustainability of the regional solution?
Consistency between regional approaches and national centers?
Model data dissemination limitations?

4. Early Roots in Regional Blends
Need a national system:
Harness full capabilities of NWP systems and national computing power
Full suite of ensembles
Employ state of the art statistical post processing techniques
Downscaling
Bias Correction
Enable enhanced consistency within NWS forecast information
National Blend of Models

5. National Model Blender Project
Develop a set of next- generation foundational gridded guidance products for NDFD weather elements based on NWS and non-NWS model information.
FNMOC
CMC
ECWMF ENSEMBLES
GFS ENSEMBLES
ECWMF
CMC ENSEMBLES
GFS
NDFD

6. National Model Blender Project Objective
Improve quality and consistency of the NWS National Digital Forecast Database Improve operational efficiency
6-8 hrs. of manual grid manipulation
Leveraging skill of guidance and the blend to assist with freeing up time to focus on DSS/radar/whatever else comes up.
Current NWS Forecaster
Leverage skill of guidance to assist with freeing up time to focus on DSS and hazardous weather operations

7. NDFD Elements

8. The National Blend Project
Create a NWS methodology for a national blend (“best”) product, beginning with the Day time frame (Phase I)
Extensible to a full set of NWS deterministic and probabilistic products covering days 1-10 (Phase II).
GFS
ECWMF
ECWMF
ENSEMBLES
CMC
NAEFS
Phase 1 – models to be used:
Deterministic GFS and ECMWF
NAEFS (North American Ensemble Forecast System) – includes ensembles of GFS and Canadian (GEM).
ECMWF ensembles.

9. National Blend Project – Phase I
Focus on Days 3- 8, so initial development efforts are concentrated on global deterministic and ensemble systems
Gridded Guidance Products:
Max/Min Temperature
3-hr Temp and Dewpoint
Wind speed and direction
Sky Cover
PoP
Precipitation Type
QPF
John Slide
The gridded elements that are going to be produced in Phase I are the following:
3 hourly Temperature;
Maximum and Minimum Temperature;
3 hourly temperature, dewpoint, sky, and wind;
And 12 hourly PoP.

10. National Blend Project – Phase II
Additional Elements:
Snowfall Amount
Wind Gusts
Predominant Weather
Others as needed*
*Derive where it makes sense to ensure consistency, efficiency: i.e. Relative Humidity, Apparent Temperature
Expansion to Days 1-10
Non-global NWP systems
(e.g., NAM, SREF)
Development of a suite of probabilistic guidance

11. The National Blend Plan
The National Blend will be distributed twice daily.
WPC will provide oversight of the National Blend for Days 3-8 to maintain meteorological and spatial consistency.
WFO’s will receive both objective and WPC (edited) grids.
WPC
Jim Slide
The Blend will be produced and distributed twice per day. The “RAW” blended output will go to the WFO and the Weather Prediction Center. WPC will also provide oversight of the National Blend to ensure meteorological and spatial consistency. These post-processed grids will also be sent to the WFOs. In the end the WFO forecaster will have both sets of data, the RAW blended guidance and the WPC edited gridded guidance.
Weather
Forecast
Offices

12. 8 Sub-Projects Funded from Sandy Supplemental ~$2.2 million
Lead efforts of post-processing team, contribute GEFS Reforecast data sets, contribute to PoP/QPF development and new blending approaches, participate in evaluation (Hamill; OAR/ESRL/PSD)
Advanced MOS statistical post-processing techniques for calibration of NDFD variables and blending of model output (Gilbert; OST/MDL)
Expand NAEFS post-processing (Zhu; NCEP/EMC)

13. Sub-Projects Funded from Sandy Supplemental ~$2.2 million
Accelerate URMA/RTMA improvements for use as “Analysis of Record” in model blender (DiMego/Pondeca; NCEP/EMC)
Perform grid-to-grid and grid-to-point verifications (Ruth; OST/MDL)
Data management and visualization tools to improve collaboration (Gilbert; OST/MDL)
Transition NCEP’s WPC blending and ensemble visualization capability to AWIPS II for the NCEP Perspective (Mainelli; NCEP/NCO)
Training (Mostek/Bua; COMET)

14. Consistency - NWS Standard Terrain
Different terrain used in downscaling systems
(AWIPS D2D display, GFE, RTMA)
GFE - RTMA Terrain
All shaded areas represent
differences greater than 100m
Example: Gridded MOS 2-m 12 hours, diff > 10oF

15. Consistency - NWS Standard Terrain
Development groups, including those responsible for post-processing and those responsible for the analysis will downscale to the same terrain in use by the WFOs in GFE.
Develop methodology with schedule to merge local edits into a national terrain file
Develop procedures to create a gridded land/water mask for MDL and EMC downscaling applications consistent with the AWIPS terrain file and marine polygons
Scheduled for AWIPS , baselined by June 2015
Remaining Question: How do local terrain edits get back to a national file?

16. Plenary Group (Regions, NWSEO, NCEP, OST, OCWWS, SPPO, OAR)
Project Management
Project Advisor
Steve Lord
Project Manager
Kathy Gilbert
Plenary Group (Regions, NWSEO, NCEP, OST, OCWWS, SPPO, OAR)
Analysis and Verification
(Ruth)
Dissemination
(Settelmaier and Gilbert
Working level Teams
Post Processing
(Hamill)
Outreach
(Sieveking and Gagan)
Testing and Training
(Novak and Craven)

17. National Blend – Analysis & Verification
Multi-Panel Graphical Interface created by MDL:
Initial evaluations of individual components of the blend
Prototype National Blend grids
Provide feedback to RTMA developers
Provide feedback to Blend developers
Show verification of experimental blends
Coming Soon:
Ability to overlay surface observations
Grid-based and point-based verification statistics for prototype blends
Jim Slide
One of the most useful tools to come out of the project thus far has been a website created MDL. Any one of us can go and compare individual components of the blend, view the latest prototype National Blend, and compare RTMA analysis. This page continues to evolve and seems to have new features added every week. John and I encourage everyone to log into the site with your NOAA username and password.
Coming very soon will be the ability to overlay surface observations which, will be key for everyone to chip in and help evaluate the progress of the RTMA improvement project.

18. RTMA/URMA Evaluation

19. Blend Evaluation

20. National Blend Project - Evaluation
Internal Evaluation through Summer 2015 (Testing and Evaluation Team)
Formal Evaluation Sept 2015 – Mar 2016
Analysis of Accuracy, Consistency, and Workload (focused on NDFD, WPC, and National Blend)
John Slide
Going forward, input from the field will remain very important. As the project matures next year, there will be two evaluation periods. The first will be internal to the Testing and Evaluation Team. The second, slated to begin next September, will be the formal evaluation period by WFOs.
WFO input will be key component of evaluation.

21. National Blend Project - Training
Overview of the National Blend
Components of the National Blend
Statistical Techniques & Procedures
National Blend Verification
National Blend Reliability
WPC Procedures
John Slide
Read Slide

22. …or time for some liquid blends…
Questions?
…or time for some liquid blends…