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Technical Implementation Notice 10-61

National Weather Service Headquarters Washington DC

112 PM EST Thu Dec 9 2010

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: Upgrade to HIRES Window: Effective March 1, 2011

Effective March 1, 2011, beginning with the 1200 Coordinated

Universal Time (UTC) run, the National Centers for Environmental

Prediction (NCEP) will upgrade the High-Resolution Window Forecast System (HIRESW). The upgrade includes:

-Changes to the model components

-Addition of a Guam domain run

-Changes to the Puerto Rico grid domain

-Addition of new products and a new output grid for Guam

-Change to the directory location on the NCEP server

These changes will not be implemented on NOAAPORT or the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) at this time. A separate TIN will be issued for the future activation of the HIRESW changes on AWIPS and NOAAPort.

Model Changes:

The HIRESW model will be updated from Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) version 2.2 code to WRF version 3.2 code for both the Advanced Research WRF (ARW) and the Nonhydrostatic Mesoscale Model (NMM) members of the system. Both the ARW and NMM models will use better conserving moisture advection after this upgrade.

Domain Changes:

The Puerto Rico domain will be expanded by approximately 50% to provide full coverage to Hispaniola . A new domain will be added to run over Guam twice daily at 00 and 12 UTC. The model grid spacing will remain unchanged at 5.15 km for ARW and 4.0 km for NMM for all domains. With the addition of Guam , the revised run schedule will be:

00 UTC: East, Hawaii , Guam

06 UTC: West, Puerto Rico

12 UTC: East, Hawaii , Guam

18 UTC: Alaska , Puerto Rico

These runs may be cancelled by hurricane model runs during the tropical season.

New Products:

BUFR-formatted point forecasts for select locations will become available with this implementation.

The new gridded output fields that will become available for all domains are:

Echo top height from simulated radar reflectivity

Planetary Boundary Layer height ( Richardson number based)

Hourly max updraft helicity

Hourly max updraft speed

Hourly max downdraft speed

Hourly max 10 m above ground level (AGL) wind speed

Hourly max 1000 m AGL simulated radar reflectivity

Hourly max/min 2 m AGL temperature

Hourly max/min 2 m AGL relative humidity

Ventilation rate

Transport wind

80 m AGL wind, temperature, moisture, and pressure

In addition, NCEP will generate a set of new high-resolution, hybrid ensemble output that combines uncertainty information from the Short Range Ensemble Forecast (SREF) with deterministic forecasts from the HIRES. Output products from this HIRES ensemble will include mean, spread, and probabilistic guidance.

Data Availability:

The HIRESW data is currently available on the NWS FTP server, the NCEP server, and in NOMADS. The directory name of the location of the HIRESW output on the NCEP server and in NOMADS will change from:

.../com/nam/prod/hiresw

.../com/hiresw/prod/hiresw

The location of the data on the NWS FTP server will not change.

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

http://www.emc.ncep.noaa.gov/mmb/mmbpll/nestpage_4km

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-January. The parallel data will

be available via the following URLs:

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

ftp://ftp.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/hiresw/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