Overview

A hurricane workshop and the first WRF tutorial for hurricanes is being planned for 22 - 26 February 2010 and will be held at the NCAR Foothills Lab in Boulder, CO. This will be a five day joint venture shared by NCAR MMM Division, NOAA/NCEP Environmental Modeling Center (EMC) and the WRF Developmental Testbed Center.

The week will begin with two days of invited scientific talks on the evolution of hurricane science, the advancement of observations and modeling systems that has occurred over the past two decades. These will include a summary of the major challenges remaining in numerical hurricane prediction. The intent of these talks is to provide the attending community with some perspective on the "why" and "how" we have developed the hurricane modeling systems that will serve the basis of this tutorial, i.e. NCAR's Advanced Hurricane Research WRF (AHW) and NCEP/EMC's operational Hurricane WRF (HWRF). Invited speakers from the National Hurricane Center will also provide the operational forecast perspective on the improvement of hurricane forecast skill derived from the community scientific and modeling contributions over the past couple decades that has markedly benefited the NWS hurricane watch and warning program. Needed future improvements in hurricane forecast skill will also be discussed.

A three day "hands on" tutorial for the AHW and HWRF will follow the above. The instruction will be done jointly as much as possible with separate lectures for aspects of the systems that are different for the two dynamic cores.

Requirements

All are invited to the Hurricane workshop (first two days). However, the hands on tutorial portion will not provide basic WRF training; therefore all participants must have demonstrable skill using and running WRF. Registration for the tutorial will be limited to 40.

We are looking forward to your attendance!