With the advent of the Unified Forecast System (UFS), the operational model development at the National Weather Service (NWS) is becoming increasingly a collective effort that includes contributions from multiple NOAA labs, national agencies and university research groups. In this context, the UFS community as a whole seeks to better understand operational forecast challenges and requirements. The NWS forecasters are the primary stakeholders of the UFS’ operational products, and therefore, continued engagement with them is important to stay abreast of the real-world performance of the model and its general utility in society.
In order to foster communication with the forecasting community, the Office of Science and Technology Integration (OSTI) Modeling Program Division conducted three workshops during November to February 2020-21.
The key outcome of the workshop is a finalized list of forecasters’ requests for the Unified Forecast System (UFS) Medium Range Weather/Subseasonal to Seasonal (MRW/S2S) and Short Range Weather (SRW) Applications. This is expected to help shape the UFS development goals in the nearterm.
