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1. The Frost system was brought back into service on 4 April. On 25 April the Snow system will be taken out of service for about 4 weeks. The GPFS file system on Snow will be mirrored to Frost prior to Snow being taken out of service. A subset of forecast model output and all observational data is currently being made available on the Snow system. During the Snow upgrade the model data will be available on Frost. Once the upgrades are complete on both the Frost and Snow systems, this subset of production data will be made available to the users of both of these systems.
2. The resolution increase of the GFS from T254 to T382 has been tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, 31 May. The highest resolution portion of the forecast is being extended from 84 to 180 hours. From 180 to 384 hours the model resolution will increase to T190. The vertical resolution will remain at 64 levels to 180 hours and will increase from 42 to 64 levels beyond 180 hours. A couple of minor changes will be made to the pressure level GRIB files. These changes include:
A. Soil moisture and soil temperature -- Currently we provide soil moisture and temperature parameters that cover the depth of 10 - 200 cm below ground. We are removing these parameters and replacing each of them with three new parameters in more discreet layers (10-40 cm, 40-100 cm, & 100-200 cm).
B. Potential Vorticity Unit (PVU) surfaces. We currently make available heights, temps, pressures, and winds on the +2 and -2 PVU surfaces. We are incorrectly labeling these levels in the GRIB PDS section from what is defined by the WMO. They are currently mislabeled as ±0.002 PVU surface. We will correct this when the T382 is implemented.
As a result of these changes, the size of these files is expected to increase by only 0.2 MB.
3. The last planned upgrade of the Eta model in the North American Meso-scale (NAM) system has been scheduled for 03 May 2005. At that time the Eta codes will be frozen until they are replaced with the Weather Research & Forecast (WRF) model in the spring of 2006.
4. In May the resolution of the Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) will be increased from 20 to 13 km. There will be no change in format or content of forecast model output. At some point in the future, 13 km output will become available.
5. More details concerning all these model upgrades will be provided as they become available.
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