(click here to download announcement as a pdf file)

The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC) is offering visitor appointments for a year beginning on a mutually agreed upon start date for proposals received by November 16, 2011.  Notification of successful proposals will be in mid-January 2012.  The DTC Visitor Program supports visitors to work with the DTC to test new forecasting and verification techniques, models and model components for numerical weather prediction (NWP).  The goal is to provide the operational weather prediction centers [e.g., the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA)] with options for near-term advances in operational weather forecasting, and to provide researchers with NWP codes that represent the latest advances in the technology.  This program also offers an opportunity for visitors to introduce new techniques into the DTC Community Codes that would be of particular interest to the research community.  For 2012, the DTC is offering two types of visitor projects: 1) projects undertaken by the Principal Investigator (PI), and 2) projects undertaken by a graduate student under direction of the PI.  Successful applicants for the first type of project will be offered up to two months of salary compensation, and travel and per diem.  The two months can be distributed over several weeks during a one-year period.  Visitors are expected to visit the DTC, located in Boulder, Colorado, and/or one of the operational centers.  Access to DTC computational resources will enable significant portions of the visitor’s project to be conducted from their home institution.  Successful applicants for the second type of project will be offered up to one year of temporary living per diem stipend and travel expenses for the graduate student to work with the DTC and/or one of its partners (e.g., EMC) and travel and per diem for up to two two-week visits to the location of the graduate student by the project PI.

The Developmental Testbed Center (DTC)

The DTC is a distributed facility with components residing in the Joint Numerical Testbed (JNT) of the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s (NCAR) Research Applications Laboratory (RAL) and the Global Systems Division (GSD) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL).  The objectives of the DTC are to: (i) advance science research by providing the research community an environment that is functionally similar to that used in operations to test and evaluate the components of the NWP systems supported by the DTC, without interfering with actual day-to-day operations, and providing that community with state-of-the-art numerical weather prediction (NWP) systems; (ii) reduce the average time required to implement promising codes emerging from the research community by performing the early steps of testing to demonstrate the potential of new science and technologies for possible use in operations; (iii) sustain scientific interoperability of the community modeling system; (iv) manage and support the common baseline of end-to-end community software to users, including dynamic cores, physics and data assimilation codes, pre- and post-processors and codes that support ensemble forecasting systems;  and (v) develop, maintain and support a community statistical verification system for use by the broad NWP community.  The fundamental purpose of the DTC is to serve as a coordinating mechanism that acts as a bridge between research and operations thereby facilitating the activities of both in pursuit of their own and common objectives.

DTC Community Codes

Community code is a free and shared resource with distributed development and centralized support.  Ongoing development of community codes is maintained under version control with periodic public releases that include the latest in developments of new capabilities and techniques.  To serve as a bridge between operations and research, the current operational capabilities must be part of these community code systems.  The DTC currently supports, in collaboration with the respective developers, the following software packages to the community:

• Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) – NWP model + pre- and post-processors
• Model Evaluation Tools (MET) – Verification package
• Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) Data Assimilation System
• WRF for Hurricanes (coupled atmosphere and ocean system)

With the exception of MET, the DTC does not contribute to the development of these software packages.  Rather, the DTC contributes to the software management and user support for these community codes.  The main developers of these packages are affiliated with NCEP’s Environmental Modeling Center (EMC), GSD, the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology (MMM) division of the NCAR Earth System Laboratory (NESL), Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), University of Rhode Island (URI) and the Hurricane Research Division (HRD) of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML).  Through its Visitor Program, the DTC supports the addition of new capabilities to these community codes, as well as tests of the various components of these community codes.

How to Respond to this Announcement

A list of potential topics of interest to the DTC is outlined in section 4.0.  These topics are general and are intended as suggestions for the type of projects we will consider.  Proposals for participation in the visitor program should provide details on the specific work the visitor would conduct with the DTC.  Past DTC Visitors are welcome to submit proposals for new projects or projects that build on past work.  All proposals will be subjected to the same review process (see description below).  The submitted material should include the following:

• Project description including a title, computational resource requirements (processing, disk space and storage), and expected outcomes (up to 5 pages)
• Curriculum Vitae (1-2 pages)
• Completed budget form (for project type 1 or type 2)

As noted above, it is expected that the visitor will spend up to two months resident (up to twelve months for graduate student project) at the DTC, an operational center or a combination of time at the DTC and an operational center.  The total duration of the project can continue for one year.  It is expected that the visitor will be able to continue the work from his or her own institution using DTC computational resources.
Proposals in response to this announcement should be sent by November 16, 2011 to
Pam Johnson
NCAR/DTC
P.O. Box 3000
Boulder, Colorado 80307
Express mail address: 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80305
Or send electronically to:  johnsonp@ucar.edu

Possible Visitor Projects with the DTC

This general announcement is for an opportunity to work with the DTC to test existing NWP-based systems in order to assess/identify deficiencies, evaluate new NWP technology that shows promise of improving NWP within the next five years, or provide the DTC with promising new technology for research applications in accordance with chartered focus areas.  Potential topics include: testing new physics parameterization schemes, investigating the interaction between physics schemes, optimizing physics suites, investigating alternative verification approaches, investigating data assimilation techniques (including variational, ensemble-based, and hybrid approaches) and observation impacts, and investigating optimal configurations of regional ensemble systems.
Specific suggested topics (not in order of priority) that would receive special consideration include:

Mesoscale Modeling

Projects evaluating sensitivities to a variety of aspects of the WRF model configuration would be of interest.  For example, projects could address the effect of vertical and/or horizontal resolution or physics parameterizations on model forecast accuracy.  Projects directed at improving an operational physics suite will be viewed favorably.  Projects executing extensive testing and evaluation that lead to Community-Contributed Reference Configurations (CCRCs) are also encouraged.  More information on the DTC’s Reference Configuration (RC) concept can be found at: http://www.dtcenter.org/config/

Diagnostic studies directed at providing in-depth information regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the current operational mesoscale prediction systems are of interest.  Projects focusing on physics packages that lead to proposed improvement in the operational physics suites are a high priority.

Recent field studies offer an abundance of special observation network data that can be used to diagnose strengths and weaknesses of NWP techniques.  Organization of data from these field studies into modules to test and evaluate certain physical parameterizations for the atmosphere and land surface models could serve as a visitor project.

Hurricanes

• Projects using the DTC-supported Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) model aimed at improving the initialization or coupled forecast model to address the tropical cyclone prediction problem are encouraged.  Projects should address the documented shortcomings of HWRF in track and intensity forecasts, as well as the over-prediction of storm size. Projects can be conducted at the 27/9 km operational resolution, or be focused on the target resolution of 3 km, which should be implemented in upcoming year(s).
• Projects leading to improved and/or expanded physics options available in the WRF software infrastructure to address the hurricane prediction problem are encouraged.  Improvements to physics suitable for high resolution (grid spacing ≤ 3 km), including air-sea transfer physics in high wind conditions, representation of convection, planetary boundary layer, cloud physics, and radiation are of particular interest.
• The initial intensity and structure of a tropical cyclone (TC) plays a critical role in the skill of numerical guidance systems.  A robust and feasible initialization methodology to obtain dynamic and thermodynamic balance for TCs remains a great challenge for TC numerical prediction system.  New methods or improvements to existing capabilities in the WRF for Hurricanes initialization procedures to assimilate satellite data and airborne Doppler radar, Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR), flight-level winds and dropsonde observations in the hurricane core region for initialization of the hurricane vortex are topic areas of interest.  Projects working directly with the community HWRF are strongly encouraged.
• Projects directed at developing and/or applying new diagnostic tools that will provide much needed information about the strengths and weaknesses of the current operational TC prediction systems are also of interest.

Data Assimilation

• Projects directed at the development or testing and evaluation of three-dimensional (3D) and four-dimensional (4D) variational data assimilation techniques, as well as hybrid variational-ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) techniques, with a focus on regional applications are of interest.  Data impact studies utilizing one of these techniques are also of interest.
• Projects are encouraged that focus on ingesting new data types into the GSI data assimilation system.  The visitor would have an opportunity to work with specialists at NCEP’s EMC and NCO, as well as the operational data ingest processes.  The visitor would have the opportunity to be exposed to NCEP communications, data formatting, operational tanking, dumping and monitoring data increments in developmental GDAS parallel runs at NCEP.  If successful, the new data will be considered for operational implementation.

Ensembles

Projects directed at advancing the design and use of ensembles for forecasting and data assimilation are of interest.  The DTC’s greatest interest is with regard to regional ensembles, including NCEP’s Short Range Ensemble Forecast (SREF) system and next generation convective-permitting ensembles akin to those used in the prediction of severe weather and tropical cyclones.  Our highest priority is projects

related to:

• Utility(ies) to create ensemble means or other estimates of central tendency, and methods to create, and test the usefulness of, different estimates of spread.
• Statistical post-processing techniques for the production of probabilistic forecast products from ensemble forecasts, such as Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) and Cluster Analysis.
• Development of tools for evaluating ensemble sensitivity
• Methods for producing initial and model perturbations

Verification

• Projects directed at adding new capabilities to MET are of interest.  Capabilities of particular interest are:
• New spatial verification techniques, including those that apply to ensembles.  
• Promising techniques for time series evaluation.
• Techniques for verifying land surface models, as well as hydrological and wind energy forecasts.
• Enhanced use of alternative datasets, such as GOES and other satellite measurements, for model verification.
• Projects investigating verification approaches that are more appropriate for providing model diagnostics than many traditional approaches – that is, approaches that provide information about particular attributes of model error that can lead to a diagnosis of needed improvements in the model are of interest.
• Projects directed at investigating verification approaches that allow incorporation of observational uncertainty into model evaluations are of interest.  A project demonstrating how this information can be separated from other sources of uncertainty (e.g., sampling variations) associated with estimates of verification measures would be of interest.
• Projects exploring the impacts and ramifications of different up/down-scaling methods that are being/could be used by MET to systematically inter-compare different model forecasts and different observational analyses that may have different grid characteristics are of interest.

Proposal Evaluation Process

The proposals submitted in response to this announcement will be subject to both external and internal review.  The external review will be conducted by the DTC Science Advisory Board (SAB), which consists of scientists from government labs, operational centers, and academic institutions.  The DTC Management Board will make the final recommendations to the DTC Director based on the SAB’s review.