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NOAA

Climate Test Bed

NMME Teleconference:

    I) A high bar for NMME sea ice forecast - CPC experimental sea ice forecast

   II) A potential new member - NCAR CESM 1.0

March 10, 2016  Dr. Wanqiu Wang of Climate Prediction Center (CPC) gave a talk on the CPC experimental sea ice forecast. The forecast skill assessment showed CFSv2 performance was comparable to other dynamical forecast systems but much less skillful than Lamont Markov statistical model, which could be taken as a reference for the dynamical model improvement. Much room for improvement was demonstrated by comparison of prediction skill (3-5 months) versus potential predictability (4-12 months). Efforts were made focusing on 1) the sea ice concentration errors in initialization, and 2) the model bias, especially on excessive surface downward solar radiation flux related to the negative bias in cloud amount. The results were promising, setting a high bar for NMME.

The telecon continued with a progress report by Drs. Joe Tribbia and Huug van den Dool on i) NCAR Community Earth System Model version 1.0 (CESM1.0, a potential new member to the NMME family) hindcast skill assessment and ii) timeliness of NMME real-time forecasts. It followed discussions on possibility to make the NMME daily forecasts accessible from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA/NCEI) for user needs.

Climate Model Development Task Force (CMDTF) Teleconference:

    I) NCEP/EMC plan for coupled testing

   II) GMTB connecting NCEP to the research community

February 23, 2016  Dr. Suru Saha of NCEP/EMC laid out a plan for coupled testing to explore the responses of various physics in different conditions, from diurnal to seasonal and for many locations, by developing a process oriented diagnostics package and making the single column models (SCM) "operational" for easier sharing/working with external community.

Dr. Lígia Bernardet from Global Modeling Testbed (GMTB) gave an overview on GMTB, which was leveraged from Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) as a critical mechanism for connecting NCEP to the research community. A Common Community Physics Package (CCPP), which would benefit CMDTF, is developing. It can be used by all models, thus will minimize needs to port new schemes to various NCEP models. Its hierarchical testing framework is expected to attract community contributions that will expedite forecast improvement. Discussions followed for cooperative development.

The CMDTF is an initiative of CPO/MAPP Program in partnership with CTB.