1B.5 - UFS Weather Model Infrastructure Development

The Unified Forecast System (UFS) is a community-based coupled Earth system. It serves as the source system for NOAA's operational numerical weather prediction suites. The UFS weather model consists of the FV3 dynamical core with the Common Community Physics Package (CCPP) for the atmosphere, MOM6 for the ocean, CICE6 for sea ice, WAVEWATCH III (WW3) for ocean waves, GOCART for aerosols, CMAQ for air quality, NoahMP for land component, the Community Data Models for Earth Predictive Systems (CDEPS) for data models, the Community Mediator for Earth Prediction Systems (CMEPS) for coupling, and the Flexible Modeling System (FMS), the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) and the National Unified Operational Prediction Capability (NUOPC) for model infrastructure. The UFS currently supports major applications with different component combinations, resolutions and domain configurations. Progress has been made in those applications for NCEP’s operational implementations including the global forecast system (GFS), the subseasonal ensemble forecast system (GEFS), the seasonal and climate forecast system (SFS), the regional Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS), the Hurricane Analysis and Forecast System (HAFS) and regional Air Quality Model (AQM).

In this presentation, we provide an overview of the latest model infrastructure development for the UFS weather model through collaboration in the UFS community over the past year. Major infrastructure updates include developing generalized asynchronized IO for UFS model components, planning and advancing regional earth model system coupling, analyzing IO changes for integrating MPAS Dycore to UFS weather model, model component testing in coupled framework, bridging regression test with workflow, implementing wave-ice coupling capability, implementing new data compression method in FV3ATM write grid component and developing utility to change resolutions for ocean and ice initial conditions. The scalability testing results for the major UFS applications will also be presented.