The weather in the tropics is important for the Earth’s atmospheric circulation pattern, therefore, correctly modeling the seasonal and year-to-year variations in this region is crucial for improving predictions of weather and climate across the world. Weather and climate variability in the tropics is primarily driven by equatorial waves interacting with smaller scale atmospheric convection. These ‘convectively coupled’ equatorial waves are important for global weather prediction because a better description of the weather in the tropics will lead to a better description of the weather in other places, such as the United States. Convectively coupled equatorial waves have been a major modeling challenge from weather to climate scales because the onset and propagation of these waves depends on processes that are only partially accounted for in global weather prediction systems. In this talk I will present recent research that highlights some key aspects needed in the NOAA GFS description of atmospheric convection to improve the interaction between small scale physics and large scale waves. These aspects include improvements in moisture-convection coupling, stochasticity and sub-grid (and cross-grid) convective organization feedbacks. I will also address aspects related to representing cumulus convection in the so-called “convective grey zone regime”, and discuss scale adaptive representation of cumulus convection needed to prepare the GFS for higher global resolution.
