[nws-changes] 20110405 GFS: Fwd: ADMIN NOTICE NOUS41 KWBC

NOTE: The nws-changes mailing list is no longer active. The list archives are made available for historical reasons.



-------- Original Message --------

126
NOUS41 KWBC 051344
PNSWSH

Technical Implementation Notice 11-07, Amended
National Weather Service Headquarters Washington DC
944 AM EDT Tue Apr 5 2011

To:         Subscribers:
            -Family of Services
            -NOAA Weather Wire Service
            -Emergency Managers Weather Information Network
            -NOAAPORT
            Other NWS Partners, Users and Employees

From:       Timothy McClung
            Science Plans Branch Chief
            Office of Science and Technology

Subject:    Amended: Global Forecast System (GFS) Upgrade:
            Effective May 10, 2011

Amended to reschedule the implementation from April 26, 2011, to
May 10, 2011 to allow for a full evaluation period.  Also amended
to include details of a new sea level pressure field being added
to select products available via the ftp servers.

Effective May 10, 2011, beginning with the 1200 Coordinated
Universal Time (UTC) run, the National Centers for Environmental
Prediction (NCEP) will upgrade the GFS. The upgrade includes:

Analysis Changes:
  --Improve Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) quality control
  --Remove redundant SBUV/2 total ozone
  --Retune SBUV/2 ozone observation errors
  --Relax AMSU-A Channel 5 quality control
  --Update Community Radiative Transfer Model(CRTM) to
    version 2.0.2
  --Include field of view size/shape/power for radiative
    transfer
  --Remove down weighting of collocated radiances
  --Limit moisture>= 1.e-10 in each outer iteration and at
    end of analysis
  --Include uniform (higher resolution) thinning for satellite
    radiances
  --Improve location of buoys in vertical (move from 20m to
    10m)
  --Improve Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) code
    with optimization and additional options
  --Recompute background errors
  --Include SBUV from NOAA-19
  --Ambiguous vector quality control for ASCAT (type 290) data

Model Changes:
  --Set new thermal roughness length
  --Set minimum moisture value in Stratosphere to 1.0x10-7
  --Reduce background diffusion in the Stratosphere

Product Changes:
  -Correct error in the 192 hr, 12-hr precipitation bucket
  -Addition of a new membrane sea level pressure (SLP) field to
   the 0.5, 1.0 and 2.5 degree pressure grib (pgrb) files only.
   This pressure is generated by first relaxing the underground
   virtual temperature and then integrating the hydrostatic
   equation downward.  The field will be subject to Spectral
   Gibsing near the coast, but this will be addressed in a future
   implementation.

The three model changes and the 192 hr precipitation change
listed above are designed to address shortfalls introduced
with the 27 July 2010 GFS resolution increase. The issues
being addressed are:

  --increased low level warm bias over land
  --negative temperature bias in the stratosphere
  --negative wind speed bias in the stratosphere
  --error in the calculation of the 12 hr accumulated
    precipitation at 192 hrs only.

Data Availability:

The format and content of all GFS data sets will remain
Unchanged, with the exception of the addition of the new SLP
field. GFS data is currently available on NOAAPORT, the
NWS FTP server, the NCEP server and in NOMADS. The location
of the data will remain unchanged.

Product delivery timing of the GFS products is not expected
to change as a result of this implementation. More information
regarding the GFS and associated products can be found at:

http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/GFS/doc.php

A consistent parallel feed of data will become available on the
NCEP server once the model is running in parallel on the NCEP
Central Computing System by mid-March.  The parallel data will
be available via the following URLs:

http://www.ftp.ncep.noaa.gov/data/nccf/com/gfs/para

ftp://ftp.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/gfs/para

NCEP encourages all users to ensure their decoders are flexible
and are able to adequately handle changes in content order,
changes in the scaling factor component within the product
definition section (PDS) of the GRIB files, and also any volume
changes which may be forthcoming. These elements may change with
future NCEP model implementations. NCEP will make every attempt
to alert users to these changes prior to any implementations.

For questions regarding these changes, please contact:

  John Derber
  NCEP/EMC, Global Climate and Weather Modeling Branch
  Camp Springs, Maryland
  301-763-8000 x 7740
  John.Derber@xxxxxxxx

  John H. Ward
  NCEP/EMC, Global Climate and Weather Modeling Branch
  Camp Springs, Maryland
  301-763-8000 x 7185
  John.Ward@xxxxxxxx

For questions regarding the dataflow aspects of these data
sets, please contact:

  Rebecca Cosgrove
  NCEP/NCO Dataflow Team
  Camp Springs, Maryland 20746
  301-763-8000 x 7198
  ncep.list.pmb-dataflow@xxxxxxxx

NWS National Technical Implementation Notices are online at:

  http://www.weather.gov/os/notif.htm

$$



  • 2011 messages navigation, sorted by:
    1. Thread
    2. Subject
    3. Author
    4. Date
    5. ↑ Table Of Contents
  • Search the nws-changes archives: