The Unified Forecast System: linking operational and research environmental modeling through an open source community approach

In the last few years, operational modeling of the environment at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  (NOAA) in the USA has been moving towards a Unified Forecast System (UFS) approach based on open source community models and tools. For NOAA, the main benefits of this approach are to more rapidly transition innovations into operations, and simplifying NOAA’s production suite of models around selected UFS applications. For the broader community, this approach makes operational models easily available for a broad range of research, as well as for testing new ideas in a vetted, near-operational environment. The collaboration and cooperation of the UFS community are powered by the Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC). EPIC is a virtual center managed by the Weather Program Office at NOAA’s Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and designed to ensure that the UFS is an efficient, effective, and user-friendly community modeling system. Additionally, EPIC ensures that NOAA’s operational needs and the Research and Development community are supported with effective Research to Operations and Operations to Research processes. NOAA furthermore drives the development of the UFS by a focus of internal NOAA resources on UFS applications. And by generally requiring applicants to NOAA Funding Opportunities to perform their research and development with UFS tools and approaches.  The presentation will outline the basic principles of the UFS, as well as progress made so far. The latter will highlight code releases and operational implementations, UFS governance, and progress with pre-operational prototype coupled models.