More Information

About NUOPC

NUOPC (National Unified Operational Prediction Capability) is an agreement to coordinate activities between the Department of Commerce (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the Department of Defense (Oceanographer and Navigator of the Navy and Air Force Directorate of Weather), in order to accelerate the transition of new technology, eliminate unnecessary duplication, and achieve a superior National global prediction capability.

The NUOPC partners determined that the Nation’s global atmospheric modeling capability can be advanced more effectively and efficiently with their mutual cooperation to provide a common infrastructure to perform and support their individual missions.

The NUOPC Tri-Agency (NOAA, Navy, Air Force) agreed to work on a collaborative vision through coordinated research, transition and operations in order to develop and implement the next-generation National Operational Global Ensemble modeling system. This NUOPC plan consists of the following elements:

A National operational numerical weather prediction system with a commitment to address common requirements
A multi-component system with interoperable components built upon common standards and a common framework
Managed ensemble diversity to quantify and bound forecast uncertainty
Ensemble products used to drive high-resolution regional/local prediction and other downstream models
A National research agenda for global numerical weather prediction to accelerate development and transition to operations
Increased leverage of partner agencies to avoid independent/duplicative operating costs

News

A Unified Ensemble Operations (UEO) agreement has been drafted to promote a framework for joint National Unified Ensemble (NUE) management by the NUOPC Tri-Agency Partnership of the Air Force, Navy, and NOAA. The agreement will establish a UEO committee which will develop an implementation and operational management plan to provide oversight of normal, ongoing NUE operations and resolve problems/issues raised by the NUOPC project and by the NUOPC Agency operational centers

The NUOPC Layer defines conventions and templates for using the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) http://www.earthsystemmodeling.org/ to make it easier to collaboratively build modeling systems, and includes a compliance checker that helps to guide users through implementation of compliant model components. The NUOPC Layer website, http://www.earthsystemcog.org/projects/nuopc/ contains roadmaps that describe a set of tasks that will enable the major U.S. Earth system model codes to be interoperable and utilize high performance, community-developed infrastructure. A prototype of the NUOPC Layer has been bundled as part of the ESMF releases since ESMF version 5.2.0r. A production release of the NUOPC Layer is scheduled for FY13.

Common NUOPC metrics have been adopted by the NUOPC Agencies for a controlled comparison and common verification of NUE performance. Each Agency has developed an implementation plan which will include regular reporting of progress.

Committee Progress - The Common Model Architecture (CMA) committee is continuing development of future model architecture and software standards. The CMA committee is working with the Content Standards Committee (CSC) to integrate the NUOPC Layer into various models, including the NOAA NEMS and Navy NOGAPS/COAMPS models. The CSC is the subcommittee working the details with ESMF committees to address standardized implementation of the ESMF and specifically the coupled atmosphere and ocean design document. Other planned CMA activities include investigation of adding new features into the NUOPC layer such as implicit coupling as it relates to the atmosphere-ocean coupling activity, nested/moving grids, and a Single Column Model. The Technology Transition Processes (TTP) committee recently coordinated a NUOPC User Workshop in Seattle to review ensemble forecasting user needs and to foster forecaster-developer interaction on ensemble forecasting issues. The TTP committee is also conducting a review of NUOPC strategic goals and is capturing metrics to be used in measuring NUOPC success. The NUOPC Post-Processing committee is continuing work on a NUOPC post-processing plan and has initiated efforts to develop a post-processing toolbox.

Upcoming Events

NUOPC will participate in the 6th North American Ensemble Forecast System (NAEFS) Workshop, 1-3 May in Monterey, CA at Fleet Numerical Meteorological and Oceanographer Center (FNMOC). This meeting will bring together the partnership and include DoD participants and others in discussions on improving the system, the individual members, the products used and development of new tools. NUOPC will lead a session on Day 2 to discuss user products across the U.S. partners. The overall objective is to better understand and coordinate current operational uses of ensemble forecast guidance.